Direct Marketing

Today: 51 behind-the-scenes conclusions from my “I endorse you” auction

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On December 10, 2025, I ran an auction in my Daily Email House community.

At the end of 24 hours, the winning bid came in at $31k.

The morning after the auction ended, I sat down and wrote up my impressions, conclusions, and shoulda/coulda/woulda regrets about this auction.

I aimed to write 50 items. I ended up with 51.

Also in the wake of this auction, I had a number of people reach out to me to say I should create a course about how to run auctions.

To everyone who wrote me, I replied this won’t be happening, because such a course already exists, and it’s the one I followed. It’s Travis Sago’s 24 Hour FUN Auction.

Only one problem:

For the longest time, Travis’s auctions course was only available inside Travis’s $1997/year community, Royalty Ronin. (I’ve been a member of Ronin since 2024, and that’s how I got access to the auction course.)

What I didn’t know, until only a few weeks ago, is that inside a second, free community that Travis runs, Community FIRE, Travis is now making 24 Hour FUN Auction available as a standalone course, for just $49.

Let me repeat that. Previously $1997… now $49.

And now, let me encourage you to follow the link at bottom of this email and get Travis’s 24 Hour FUN Auction training today.

As one dude in my community put it after my auction, auctions are not a “method that Internet marketers have ruined yet.”

There’s no guarantee that Internet Marketers won’t ruin auctions given enough time.

But at least this year, auctions a new and exciting way to sell online.

Even if you feel you are the smallest of fish, with a tiny audience, and no partners lined up, knowing how to run an auction like this can be a new opportunity to differentiate and distinguish yourself in the marketplace.

I’ve made the case in an earlier email that auctions are a legit alternative to product launches, and that they fix a lot of chronic problems that launches have.

Auctions are also an amazing way to inject new engagement and life into a list or community, even one that’s languishing or eroding week by week. (In my own non-languishing community, I had people who never even made a peep in the community before the auction bidding thousands during the auction.)

Auctions make buying feel like a treat. And like I wrote yesterday, when buying feels like a treat, the price that folks are willing to pay goes up. As the winning bidder in my auction, The Amazing Nick Bandy, put it:

“@John Bejakovic feel free to quote me saying it’s the most fun I ever had spending $31k”

Also, if you get Travis’s 24 Hour Fun Auction training today, I will give you, as a free bonus, my 51 behind-the-scenes conclusions about my “I endorse you” auction, including:

* How to make more money from your auction offer weeks later… from people who did NOT bid (conclusion 2)

* Why I felt bad right after the auction ended, even with the auction doing 3x of what I had hoped for (stupid but instructive, conclusion 12)

* How to “auction off” multiple identical high-ticket offers in secret (conclusion 13)

* 2 easy tweaks I could have made to grow my group significantly during the auction (conclusions 19 and 20)

* A “strip tease” I performed several times during the auction to inject energy when energy seemed to be flagging (conclusion 21)

* The 13-word question that helped me form the core of the offer I made, which ended up being bid up to $31k

* The one bonus that added ~$10k to the winning bid (conclusion 30)

* The “exploitative” technique (wasn’t really exploitative, but it felt like that to me at the time) that got top bidders to keep bidding (conclusion 34)

* My big resolution about auctions I will run in the future (conclusion 49)

* An easy way to add life in the comments without writing anything (conclusion 51)

Do you want this behind-the-scenes peek into the insights I wrote up for myself? If so, here’s what to do:

1. Go to https://bejakovic.com/fun-auction

2. Ask to join the Community FIRE group (you gotta do it to be able to be able to buy the course, and like I said, it’s free to join)

3. Once you’ve been approved as a group member (should be quick), go to the Course area of Community FIRE, and get your copy of the 24 Hour FUN Auction for a whopping $49

4. Forward me your receipt from Skool, and I will get you my 51 behind-the-scenes conclusions from my $31k auction.

Last bit of encouragement:

If you made a deal with yourself not to buy every shiny and exciting training this year, I honestly recommend you make Travis’s 24 Hour FUN Auction the exception. The link is above.

Free welcome sequence for small businesses

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I recently met Liz Wilcox, and I’m gonna spend the rest of this email selling her to you.

Liz is fond of wearing large glasses, where the frame is of different colors for the left and the right eye.

She was once a contestant on the TV show Survivor (Survivor 46).

Today, Liz runs a paid membership for small business owners who want to do something with email marketing, but don’t really know what to to do.

Inside her paid membership, Liz teaches email marketing, has expert speakers come in and teach also (I will be speaking in May), plus, as the the main selling point, she gives members weekly templates and swipes for their business’s email newsletter, so they can get it out in minutes instead of hours or never.

Like I said, Liz’s membership is for business owners who have heard of the power of email marketing, but don’t really wanna write themselves… don’t wanna hire a copywriter either… don’t wanna entrust this to a VA… and yet want to get the benefit of regular communication with their prospects and clients and customers.

So how much would you pay for such an incredible and spectacular email marketing membership, which slices, and dices, and makes julienne fries?

$999/month?

NO!

$99/month??

NO!!!

$19/month???

NO! NO! NO!

Liz charges 9 whole bucks per month for her email marketing membership. And get this. She has… 4,000 members of her $9/month membership. At those numbers, she has the margin to make sure she can provide and deliver great templates, great trainings, and great everything.

But I’m not here to sell you on Liz’s membership. Not really, not yet at least.

All I really wanna do is just point you to Liz’s “Swipe Swipe Baby” lead magnet. It’s an entire templatized welcome sequence, plus three weekly newsletters, which you can plug into your business right now if you want.

When I initially talked to Liz, I asked her what lead magnet of hers I should send folks to.

She said, “I only have one. It’s six years old, and I’ll never create a new one, because it just works.”

And why not? Liz’s lead magnet is in fact the perfect magnet for prospective leads for $9/month membership.

So if you want Liz’s free welcome sequence templates… if you wanna know more about Liz (lots of Vanilla Ice references on her site)… or if you’ve been intrigued by her $9/month membership… here’s the front door, fully free to walk through:

https://bejakovic.com/lizwilcox

Final call for… my unnamed “get you a $1k+ offer” level-up

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Final call?

For ever? For ever ever?

I don’t know. Let’s see. It’s definitely the final call for this first cohort, which will kick off next Tuesday, February 3.

In case you have successfully managed to avoid all my emails over the past few days:

I’m offering to help you create and sell a 1k+ offer, and to do it over the next few weeks.

The way to do it is to package up your knowledge and help, not as “coaching,” which so many people try offering, without success…

… but as the guaranteed solution to ONE core problem that people on your list have.

This is good for the people you sell to, and it’s good for you too.

For them, it:

* Solves a legit and nagging problem

* Gets them a result quickly

* Is an easier decision than the vague, seemingly “forever” investment of coaching

For you, it:

* Makes you feel good about working with people you can help and get results for

* Gets you paid

* Gets you customers who have had a great experience with you, and who will likely want to pay you again in the future to solve their next problem

For this first cohort, I’m asking that you have an email list that you write to regularly, with ~500 people opening your emails whenever you send.

If you have that, and if you like the idea of having an offer you can sell for $1k+, 3-5 times a month, then hit reply and tell me so, and I’ll be in touch.

Do you make these mistakes in guarantees?

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A few days ago, inside my Daily Email House community, I invited people to share:

1. “The most you’ve ever spent on a single book, course, or coaching that got you EQUIVALENT OR GREATER value”

2. “The most you’ve ever spent on a single book, course, or coaching that got you ZERO value”

The responses were interesting and revealing. (It might be worth asking your own audience, either via email or in your community, to share the same.)

One of the responses was from a House member whose worst high-ticket purchase was a £1300 program to help build an online fitness business.

Why was this the worst?

Says the House member:

“2 weeks in, I realised this was not what I wanted to do and literally just quit. Didn’t even bother trying to get my money back because it was 100% my fault.”

This speaks to my experience with money-back guarantees.

I personally never get reassured when I see an offer with a money-back guarantee because I know will most likely never claim it, even if I never open up the product… or if I open it and find it disappointing… or if I simply decide it’s not for me.

And vice versa.

I don’t offer money-back guarantees on the stuff I sell. But I have heard-tell that people who are reassured by money-back guarantees tend, more than the mean, to make for bad long-term customers.

My point today is that risk reversal can be done differently, without promising money back.

It can be done in a way that reassures good prospects, and doesn’t reassure or invite bad prospects.

For example, there’s the guarantee I made during the “I endorse you” auction I ran last month. The guarantee there was to keep working with and promoting the winner (The Amazing Nick Bandy) until I’ve paid back the entire winning bid.

(So far, I’ve been working behind the scenes with Nick, and setting the stage for him to make his $31k, and then some, back.)

As a second example, there is what I’m doing now with the “Get you a $1k+ offer” offer I have been talking about for the past week. As a reminder, this offer is for you if:

– You have tried offering coaching in the past, or are trying to offer it now, without much success, and…

– You have a small but dedicated list of readers, meaning 500 or more folks who open your emails whenever you send one.

If that’s you, then what I’m offering is to help you repackage “coaching” into a simple 1k+ offer that actually sells for you, and to keep helping you until you’ve sold $10k of your new offer.

Sounds attractive? Then hit reply and let me know.

If I’m actually suited to help you get to where you wanna go, I’ll share the full details of this offer… including how I’m taking the risk from your shoulders and putting it onto mine, and how I’m tying my success to your success.

Why I keep putting “coaching” in quotes

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Yesterday, a long-time reader and customer wrote in, with confusion about my current offer to help you turn “coaching” into a simple $1k+ offer:

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I guess I don’t know why “coaching” is in quotes. Is this to sell coaching? Part-time coaching? There is something I’m missing or don’t understand about the offer.

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It takes a big man to admit he has been making a mistake in his emails for a week or more, and to apologize for failing his readers.

Fortunately, I am not a big man, so you don’t have to listen to me apologize or admit to anything.

Instead, I can tell you I’ve been reading a book about marketing (I know, what’s new).

Says the book, there’s gold in what your marketplace tells you, not directly when you ask, or in formal situations like when they decide to sit down and write you a testimonial. Instead, there’s gold in unguarded moments, in casual comments, in the tone in which they write in and ask questions or reply to your emails.

In short, you gotta read between the lines.

Looking at my reader’s comment above, my reading between the lines is of frustration.

My further reading (ok, guessing) is that this frustration is due to being both intrigued by my offer and being unable to make a yes or no decision on it.

And getting still further in between the lines, I’m fully guessing this inability to decide is because my reader cannot tell if this offer I’ve been talking about is intended for him or no.

Am I right in my reading between the lines?

I have no idea. But let me try to be explicit about who this offer is for and who it’s not for, and see the result.

If:

– You have tried offering coaching in the past, or are trying to offer it now, without much success, and

– You have a small but dedicated list of readers, meaning 500 or more folks who open your emails whenever you send one…

… then what I’m offering right now is for you. My offer is to help you repackage “coaching” into a simple 1k+ offer that actually sells, and to keep helping you until you’ve sold $10k of your new offer.

On the other hand, if you don’t have a list, or you never write them, or you have no interest in working with any of the folks on your list directly and 1-1, then I’ll be useless to you, at least in my current incarnation.

As for why “coaching” is in quotes… from that same book I’m reading:

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Want to know what separates the experts who have people begging to buy from the ones who struggle to make sales?

It’s not their expertise.

It’s not their marketing.

It’s not even their solutions.

It’s knowing exactly how to package what they know into the perfect next step.

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That’s why I keep putting “coaching” in quotes. Because “coaching” stands for a specific way to package up and publicly present what you know.

It’s not the only way.

If offering “coaching” hasn’t been working for you, I’m offering you a new way. A way to package up what you know into the perfect next step for people in your audience, one that you can realistically and congruently charge $1k+ for, and that the right people will readily say yes to.

If that’s something you are interested in, then hit reply, and write me some lines that I can read between.

$13k of existing, hidden demand

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Today, first I got a self-serving testimonial to put in front of you, and then I will tell you something possibly illuminating, which that testimonial is proof of.

Over the past couple months, I’ve been helping several folks repackage their non-selling “coaching” into a sexy, specific, sellable $1k+ offer.

One person I’ve been helping is “Rebelpreneur” Gasper Crepinsek.

I started worked with Gasper on this back in mid-December. Over the following few weeks, Gasper’s offer gradually came together, and he put it in front of his audience. He DM’ed me last week with an update of results so far:

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On a separate note:

We sold $13K+ with the first launch of this new offer. Not all cash collected (some split into payment plan).

Which is a great result by itself. And feel free to use it in your marketing.

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Now as promised, here’s the possibly illuminating thing that Gasper’s testimonial is proof of:

I was privy to Gasper’s launch emails. He sent out 3-4 emails to his list, basically telling people the outcome of his $1k+ offer, with various levels of detail of how that outcome will be reached, from “no detail” to “quite a bit of detail.”

The key being, Gasper was not “creating demand” through subtle and patient marketing.

Rather, he was simply tapping into existing demand, by basically asking people if they want what he has to sell.

In his case, that existing demand turned out to be worth $13k this month, and will almost certainly be worth more $k next month, when he reopens his offer.

The same is very likely true of you.

If you have a small but dedicated audience, you have untapped demand on there.

There are people on your list right now who are open to buying — or are even actively looking to buy — from somebody who can help them solve their problems.

Those people will buy from somebody. Maybe not today. Maybe next week, or next month. But that demand will go somewhere.

Point being:

If you put together a sexy offer, that somebody can be you.

As I’ve done with Gasper, I’ll be working with a few more people in February to help them repackage “coaching” into a $1k+ offer.

Would you like to use your knowledge and skill to help people in your audience get results?

Would you like to have a $1k+ offer, which you can sell 3-5 times a month, and which you can deliver in 6 or fewer hours to start, and in less and less time with each subsequent sale?

Would you like my help in getting there?

If you would, hit reply, and let’s see if I’m a good fit to get you results.

Really great price on coaching

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I talked to a dude recently who has made a new coaching offer to his list, with 1-1 access to him, in various formats, for a full year, at a really great price.

Nobody bought.

Now here’s a marketing and psychology truth that took me embarrassingly long to learn:

If you offer people a really great price on something they don’t want to buy, the really great price won’t make them want to buy it either.

That’s why discounting fails to drive sales in so many situations. Discounting only works when people want the thing being sold, and they value it at the full price you claim for it.

But back to coaching.

As I’ve been croaking about for a few weeks now, nobody really wants “coaching.”

Yes, some people manage to sell “coaching” because they have so much status, authority, and relationship with their audience. In those situations, their coaching clients are effectively buying the coach, and the relationship with that coach, rather than the coaching itself.

That’s definitely a nice position to be in.

But what if you don’t have that level of status, authority, and relationship with your audience yet?

The fix is simple, and can be executed quickly. It’s to sell people something they actually want to buy, and which they value at the price you ask for it.

This is how you go from trying and failing to sell “coaching,” which people don’t want even at a really great price… to having a $1k+ offer, which you can make 3-5 sales of each month, and which is both easier to sell and deliver than “coaching.”

Maybe you’re interested in how to implement this fix, which I claim is “simple, and can be executed quickly.”

I’ve prepared a 1-page overview of how to do it, a process I’ve guided a few people through already.

I’m begrudgingly willing to share this 1-page overview with you.

If you like what you read, you’ll have the opportunity to work with me directly in February, to implement this for yourself and your own list.

Or of course, you can just run with it yourself.

In case you’re interested in the 1-page overview, hit reply, tell me you want it, and I’ll get it to you.

You’re probably creating too many products

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I’m reading a book by a successful direct marketer. A few nights ago ago, I came across the following provocative statement:

“Creating too many products is one of the biggest mistakes marketers make. Customers become overwhelmed too easily.”

The fix, according to this guy, is to have a few products — three is enough — and to do a thorough job selling them, by changing the hook, the segment you’re targeting, your method of selling. The guy gives an example:

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I ran two campaigns, back-to-back.

The first was a seven-day webinar that talked about a hot new niche that’s taking the Internet marketing community by storm. The day after that promo ended, I launched another promotion, similar to the one I’ll reveal in the next chapter.

In both cases, I was selling the exact same product. Same exact offer and price point. But I used two different hooks and two different strategies (webinar vs. mini group).

The first promotion generated $180k in up-front sales… and… the follow-up promotion generated over $200k.

If I had just promoted the webinar and concluded that I had pulled all the sales out of my list, I would have lost out on $200k.

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been getting people to raise their hand if they’ve tried offering coaching to their list, and if they only heard crickets as a result.

My solution to this cricket cacophony is to repackage and reposition “coaching” into a $1k+ offer to solve a specific problem. Doing this makes both selling and delivery easier.

But here’s the crucial thing, and how this ties into the “too many products” idea above:

If you figure out a solid way to solve a problem for one segment of your audience… chances are excellent that have you just “created” a half dozen successful new offers, which you can sell in the future, with minimal tweaking of the underlying product, just by changing the hook, the segment you’re targeting, or your method of selling.

As one example, the product I have created as the solution to the “coaching crickets” problem is something I will pitch in the future to:

– People who hear crickets when they pitch “consulting”

– People who have a small list and want to monetize it quickly

– List owners (including those with big lists) who are only selling low- and mid-ticket offers, and are frustrated by it

– People who have a cold traffic funnel that is working but which they cannot scale (hello Nick)

– Freelancers who cannot get their audience to take them up on their services

– Freelancers who want income stability

– Community owners who want to monetize their group

– etc.

But… forget I said any of that. At least for now.

Because for now, I am only focused on list owners who pitched “coaching” to their list… and heard crickets as a result.

If that’s you, I have a solution, which I’m happy to share with you in the form of a 1-page overview.

If you like what you read, you’ll also have the opportunity to work with me directly in February, to implement this for yourself and your own list.

In case you’re interested in the 1-page overview, hit reply, tell me you want it, and I’ll get it to you.

Daily email thinking, fast and slow

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In response to my email yesterday, a reader writes in with doubts about daily emailing:

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I think daily might burn out my audience since I speak of very human and heavy topics. I’ve been playing around with a weekly educational email and light launches otherwise.

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Here are some highly personal numbers:

During my sales promo last week, for the 1-Person Advertorial Agency, I made over $11k. By the time the payment plan payments roll in, I will make over $13k. For sending 7 emails.

Big whoop, good for me, right? Here’s the number that’s relevant to you:

Exactly 1.01% of my list took me up on this offer.

98.99% of my list said NO to this offer, either indirectly, by ignoring it, or directly, by going to the sales page, looking it over, and deciding against it, or even more muscularly, by unsubscribing from my list.

And yet, somehow, the math, 1.01% conversion rate and all, worked out in my favor.

Economist Daniel Kahnemann had this book. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Fast thinking is intuitive, automatic, and feels really certain. It’s how you know the answer to 2+2 = ?

Slow thinking is plodding, might require pen and paper, and doesn’t feel nearly as sure, even when it’s 100% right. Slow thinking is how you work out what 222*222 is.

My point is that our fast-thinking brains are not designed to deal with the realities of direct response marketing.

Our intuition — our fast thinking — says that nobody wants to read those 40-page sales letters. Nobody will pay thousands of dollars for a course, or tens of thousands of dollars for coaching. Nobody wants to get a sales pitch in their inbox every day — “not in my niche!”

And you know what?

Our intuition is right!

98.99% of the time, or thereabouts.

But it’s in that 1.01% of time where our intuition is wrong, where the slow thinking kicks in, that a successful or even very successful direct marketing business can be built.

This slow thinking stuff applies to daily emailing.

Most people in the world do not want to hear from you daily. Even most people who sign up to your list don’t want to hear from you daily.

My open rate is a little over 30%. Two out of three people who are on my list don’t want to hear from me every day!

And yet, I’ve been living off my very modest-sized email list, for years now, comfortably.

This slow thinking stuff applies to offers too.

Our intuition — our fast thinking — says to try to accommodate as broad an audience as possible with an offer.

But slow thinking eventually figures out the truth. The narrower, the more niche, the more restrictive and specific an offer, the more likely it is to attract the attention of the right people, to sell, and to sell for good money.

This is something I’ve baked into the process I’ll be taking a few people through next month, which I’ve taken to calling the “Road trip to a $1k+ offer that sells 3-5 times each month.”

Meanwhile, if you’re emailing weekly, that’s certainly way better than not emailing or emailing only sporadically.

But if you want to monetize a small but dedicated list, for years, without fail, you will find the path easier and richer by emailing daily. If you want my help with that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

How to sell a $1k+ coaching program without testimonials

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I’ll tell you in a a sec how to sell a $1k+ coaching offer without testimonials. But first lemme tell you a related and intriguing list-building tactic.

It comes courtesy of marketer Kevin Hood, who shared it inside my Daily Email House community a couple days ago. It goes like this:

1. Come up with a list of “mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive buyer personas” who could potentially be interested in what you offer (Kevin used AI, but you can use… other methods also)

2. Come up with a list of “pain points, desires, beliefs, thoughts, and feelings” those people might have

3. Go on social media and write 100s of tweets or threads or stories or whatever and combine one item from list 1 and one item from list 2 in a statement that looks like:

“If you spent your 20s or 30s digging yourself into debt but deep down you desperately want to become financially free, I hope you find my page.”

Says Kevin:

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Where most posts get 500-1000 views.

These get thousands.

No matter your follower count.

This is a real post from one of my clients who teaches Financial Independence and investing, and it got 189,000 views while generating 1,600 new followers for his account. And while we can’t be 100% precise on measuring email subscribers according to individual posts, the estimate is around 100 new email subscribers from this post alone.

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I don’t know what Kevin client’s “my page” looks like. Maybe it has some testimonials. Maybe it has a unique mechanism for how he financially frees 20- and 30-somethings from debt. Maybe it features risk-reversal copy such as, “Sign up to my newsletter and if you don’t like my emails, you get to come to my house and kick me in the shin.”

Whatever. All those things are nice addons.

But the fact remains, specificity, and in particular double-specificity like Kevin is using, is a powerful way of drawing attention… creating interest and desire… and providing proof. Even if you have nothing else going on.

Now back to coaching programs.

Q: How do you sell a $1k+ coaching program without testimonials?

A: You rely on other forms of proof.

There’s many, beyond testimonials. In particular, there’s specificity. I’ll leave you with a riddle related to that:

If you’re looking to monetize your list with a $1k+ offer… if you tried offering “coaching” or “mentoring” to your list before but got zero takers… then how do you figure out what specific or double-specific segment of your audience to appeal to in order to actually make some sales?

I’ll give you a hint about my thinking.

My recommendation is not to do what Kevin did, and use AI to come up with a bunch of stuff that you throw at the wall to see if it sticks.

My recommendation is also not to use your own creativity and brainpower, to sit and introspect what specific segment you could appeal to.

If you eliminate both of those options… then what’s left as a means of determining which specific people you could help with your $1k+ coaching offer?

If you like, guess what I have in mind, write in and tell me so, and I’ll tell you quick whether you got it or no.