Direct Marketing Archives - Page 8 of 73

3 lessons from my just concluded promo

January 18, 2026 by John Bejakovic

After promos, I have this habit to sit down and write up a list of conclusions.

After promos that go well, I have this habit to publicly share some of those conclusion in an email.

I just concluded my promo for for the 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

It went well.

I promoted from last Monday until last night. I sent 7 emails. I made a nice pile of money, enough to buy an F1 Savannah cat.

Here are three things I concluded/learned/want to remember from the current promo:

#1. Keep mailing as long as you’re making sales

I was 93% sure this promo would be a 98% flop for me.

I had already promoted 1PAA to my list, less than 6 months ago, when v1 became available.

I figured I had tapped out demand. I figured the mystique and excitement had gone. I figured the updated version — a nice and polished video course as opposed to a live all-evening training — actually lowered the perceived value rather than increased it.

“Should I promote this at all?” I said to myself.

I decided I would send one email on Monday and most likely be done with it. I had planned out bonuses but I purposefully didn’t even list them in the initial email, because I didn’t want to make more work for myself.

I sent that one email on Monday… and I made a couple sales.

So I decided to mail on Tuesday also.

I made more sales.

So I kept mailing, day after day after day.

Every night, I would look at my 1PAA promo like the Dread Pirate Roberts looked at Westley, and I would say to it:

“Good night, 1PAA promo. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

Well, I ended up promoting all week long, and making sales with each email I sent out. When I decided to close the promo last night, so I could move on to other things, I wrote one final farewell email, after which half a dozen more sales came in.

Lesson being, I don’t know anything, the market decides, and so I should keep mailing as long as I’m making sales.

#2. Roll your own affiliate offers

In some ways, I’ve been intimately tied to this 1PAA offer.

Last summer, Thom Benny announced this offer without making it available for affiliates.

I pushed him to open it up to affiliates because I wanted to promote it.

When Thom said he might do so in the future but cannot now, because he doesn’t have a shopping cart that accepts affiliates, I offered to run the entire offer through my ThriveCart.

Thom agreed.

The result was that we ended up selling the 30 spots of v1 of 1PAA in a matter of hours after I promoted it to my list.

When this v2 rolled around, Thom sent out a draft of his sales page.

I pushed back on what I thought was an injustice being done to the amazing case studies this offer has, which were buried deep in the body copy.

As a result, Thom pulled these case studies into the lead, and turned the dutiful v1 of the sales page into a sexy v2 of the sales page, at least to my opportunity-seeker eyes.

There’s a bigger point here:

I’ve realized I love being in a position of helping put together an affiliate offer, and promoting offers that haven’t yet become sclerotic because the offer owner really wants nothing to do with the offer any more, except to trot it out from time to time to some new affiliates, and maybe make a few more sales if those will come.

I first influenced and helped shape an affiliate offer a couple years ago, with Steve Raju’s ClientRaker.

I did it again here with 1PAA.

I will be seeking out more opportunities to partner with people and help them put together a great offer that I can then promote as an affiliate.

#3. Old promise + new plan

Marketer Justin Goff, who used to write these kinds of post-promo lessons-learned emails, which I loved and am copying now, said something profound once:

“Making money with an email list is really about selling the same benefits over and over again with a new mechanism.”

I’ve summarized this to myself as, “Old Promise + New Plan.”

I’ve realized that, when I stick to this super simple formula, offers I create or promote perform well (again, with a 98% certainty). When I stray from this formula, offers flop (with a 93% certainty).

And on that note, I can tell you that for the rest of this month, I will be talking about how you can monetize your email list, so you can buy your own F1 Savannah cat, by creating 1k+ offers that your list actually wants to buy, and that you feel good about delivering. But more about that… tomorrow.

Last call for 1-Person Advertorial Agency & my bonuses

January 18, 2026January 18, 2026 by John Bejakovic

It’s 10:32 pm on Saturday night as I write this. I’m having my chamomile tea. I’m eyeing my Kindle longingly. Frankly I had been hoping to skip writing this final email BUT—

Every time I’ve sent an email this week about the 1-Person Advertorial Agency, I’ve made multiple sales.

People want this offer.

And so, in respect to the spirit of Gary Halbert, who said you keep mailing an offer for as long as it keeps making money…

… in due deference to my own pocket book, which is always hungry for a little more cash…

… and also with your best interest in mind, in case this offer could be useful to you, but you haven’t given it proper consideration until now…

… let me say this is your last call.

The deadline to get 1-Person Advertorial Agency + my bonuses is tonight at 12 midnight PST, a short 5 hours from the time this email, scheduled as it soon will be, will go out.

This is the last email I will send about it. (Even if it ends up driving in multiple sales. Sorry Gary!)

All week long, I’ve been saying 1-Person Advertorial Agency is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026.

You can get the full details about this offer at the sales page below.

If you act before the deadline, I am also offering the following bonuses:

#1 Horror Advertorial Swipe File, which you can feed to the AI beast so it produces better, or rather, more horrifying advertorials

#2. 26 Rules of Client Management for Copywriters, taken from my Copy Zone guide to the business side of copywriting

#3. Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rapida, which digs into the topic of building long-term relationships with copywriting clients much more deeply

#4. Ghostbuster, Nick Bandy’s 5-stage sequence for reactivating (reanimating?) dead clients or prospective clients

If you want to get in in the little time that remains, before the church bells toll, the wolves start howling, and the gates shut you out:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

Free 3-step plan to get more testimonials, perform an X-ray of your market, have buyers recommit to what they just bought from you, and possibly even drive more sales

January 17, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Here’s a 3-step plan to get more testimonials, perform an X-ray of your market, have buyers recommit to what they just bought from you, and possibly even drive more sales:

STEP 1. Sell an offer.

STEP 2. Offer people a bonus if they buy the offer now.

STEP 3. When people buy, send them an email with the promised bonuses. At the top of that email, paste in the following mystical, secret, wizard-like spell:

===

Thanks for taking me up on [the name of your offer].

I’m curious, what made you do it?

===

Yes, that’s it.

Yes, I can see your jaw drop and your eyes roll back in your head from mock amazement.

All I can say is, don’t knock it till you try it.

I’ve been doing this all week long with people who took me up on my recommendation for the 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

As usual when I interact directly with people on my list, I’ve been blown away by how little I know, how pale my own imagination, and how rich and surprising it is to go out to my market and talk to them.

You want examples?

I’ve gotten a dozen responses so far, with varying answers to “What made you do it.” Three categories have been prevalent so far:

A. The opportunity of the beast

This being a biz-in-a-box offer, it’s inevitable that people would cite the opportunity of it. Ok, that’s not surprising. But still, it’s different and more insightful to hear it in people’s own words:

#1. “I still don’t plan on leaving my job which I like no matter how successful it is though I might stop working overtime and do this instead once it starts paying. In the meantime it’s not that much of a time commitment that I can’t do both.”

#2. “I like Travis [Sago]’s model of working other’s lists but this method looks equally profitable but might be more helpful in expanding my skills.”

B. A point of differentiation

I hadn’t thought of this one at all, and I didn’t talk about it in my emails. And yet, multiple people brought up the uniqueness of advertorials as opposed to other things copywriters can offer:

#1. “It’s also a point of differentiation since it seems that everyone who hasn’t firmly planted their flag in the email copywriting camp (i.e. most copywriters/marketers) has rebranded themselves as a creative strategist overnight (soon-to-be most copywriters/marketers).”

#2. “Clients who are willing to spend money on advertorials are more serious overall. Meta ads is the bright shiny object that everyone and their dog in law wants rn. But advertorials have been around way longer and sophisticated clients like them a lot.”

C. Because of me

1-Person Advertorial Agency is a great offer, I think its value is self-contained.

And yet, the fact that my readers know and trust me (and maybe even like me???) definitely helps sell the offer, and makes it more credible — even when I say I haven’t used this system myself:

#1. “Plus, as a previous buyer of yours, products you recommend carry more weight than other offers.”

#2. “The fact that you are promoting it. Especially your honesty in saying you have not been taken the course yourself.”

So there you go. Sell something. Then ask people why they bought, and you shall receive.

And now, an important announcement:

The opportunity to get 1-Person Advertorial Agency + the bonuses I am offering is ending tonight at 12 midnight PST.

Along with the core 1-Person Advertorial Agency offer (full details at the sales page below), I am offering the following bonuses:

#1 Horror Advertorial Swipe File, which you can feed to the AI beast so it produces better, or rather, more horrifying advertorials

#2. 26 Rules of Client Management for Copywriters, taken from my Copy Zone guide to the business side of copywriting

#3. Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rapida, which digs into the topic of building long-term relationships with copywriting clients much more deeply

#4. Ghostbuster, Nick Bandy’s 5-stage sequence for reactivating (reanimating?) dead clients or prospective clients

If you wanna get that, you will have to act today. But why not act now, while it’s on your mind? Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

The Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Clients

January 14, 2026 by John Bejakovic

The past few days, I’ve been promoting the 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I claim is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026.

Do you want a proof element for the effectiveness of what’s being sold to you here?

Will-ye or nill-ye, I’ll give it to ya.

As I wrote a couple days ago, the guy who came up with the 1-Person Advertorial Agency system is a copywriter named Sam Bradbury-Butler.

But the guy who actually got Sam to document his system and turn it into course is former Agora copywriter turned copywriting guru Thom Benny, who counts Sam as one of his proteges.

With me so far?

Good. Cause we have a few more twists and turns:

After the auction I ran in my Skool community last year, I suggested to Thom that, instead of doing a launch as planned for 1-Person Advertorial Agency, we could do an auction. (Remember those?)

We could auction off a done-with-you, 1-1 partnership with Sam… with the post-auction offer being a piece-by-piece breakdown of Sam’s system, along with group coaching to help you implement the same.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter too much if you understand the details of this fantastical offer.

What matters is that meetings were held… plans were hatched… and visions of a $150k auction were had, at least by me.

We even came up with an attractive name for the first (logical) step of Sam’s system, calling it:

“The Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Clients”

Aaaaand…. then it all came crashing down.

Sure, Thom and I, who weren’t involved at all in the delivery of these big plans, were excited by the idea of the auction, and the group coaching on the back of it, and all the money it would bring.

Sam, on the other hand, was not excited. In fact he nixed the idea straight out. When I asked why, Thom explained:

“Sam’s got a big project waiting in the wings which he’ll be turning his attention to once this launch closes. So he doesn’t want this launch to burden him with a bunch of other stuff he didn’t really sign up for.”

In other words, Sam is too busy and too happy simply doing what he is teaching here. He has no interest in doing any more teaching of it than he’s already done, even with the promise of more money.

That’s because Sam is making A LOT MORE money by simply working his own system ($49k earlier this month, for just one client, and Sam’s got several).

And though Thom managed to convince Sam to take the time to share how his system works, that’s where it stops, because Sam is going back to profiting from this thing that he’s offering to you right now.

That’s the proof element I promised you up top. It answers the age-old question that pops up with any business opportunity:

“If this is so great, why aren’t you doing it yourself and why are you so busy selling it instead?”

Well, Sam is doing it himself, and he doesn’t want to be busy selling it any more, because he wants to get back to doing.

Anyways, if you wanna find out more about 1-Person Advertorial Agency, you can do so at the sales page below.

Since our ambitious auction plans got scrapped, you can also find out, or at least get a good sense for, “The Lazy Man’s Way to Copywriting Clients.”

You can find that described in the section under the subhead, “Module 3: Getting Paid As A 1-Person Advertorial Agency.”

For that, and the full details of this opportunity while it’s still live:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorial-agency

Will the advertorial opportunity get saturated?

January 13, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Yesterday, I started promoting 1-Person Advertorial Agency, which I claim is the hottest opportunity for copywriters in 2026.

Today, I made some sales. I also got some questions. Here’s a layup:

===

My furry little mittens are intrigued, enough to make me interested in creating a lucrative side hustle so I don’t have to rely on overtime from work to pad my pay packet. I am not working in the business or copywriting space but if this works for beginners then I think it would work for me. My question though, is do you think this would get saturated given places aren’t capped?

===

“Will it get saturated” is a natural question to ask with any “hot” business opportunity, even a niche one like this.

The glib answer is to do some back of napkin math:

There are an estimated 280 million ecommerce businesses worldwide. Even if only 1% are a good fit for this (it’s likely more), and if a staggering 1,000 people end up buying and applying this program (probably way less), there will still be 280 clients to go around for everybody who gets in on this opportunity.

That’s all probably true and even an underestimate. But who was ever persuaded by numbers? For sure not me.

So lemme tell you a better way to look at this situation, meaning my way to look at this situation.

The real opportunity here is not to get dozens or hundreds of clients, and to keep hunting after more and more clients.

The real opportunity here is that advertorials that increase front-end conversions are a way to get your foot in the door with two or three really good long-term partners, who are able and willing to pay you hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars over the long-term.

I speak to this from experience. Five+ years ago, I was actually writing lotsa advertorials for ecommerce clients.

The results were just like the sales page for 1-Person Advertorial Agency claims:

Dramatic boosts in conversion rates and ability to scale on cold traffic. A lot of demand.

All in all, it was fine work, and well paid, even though it took me 4-5 days to do what can now be done in 45 minutes.

But even at the nice rate I was getting paid per advertorial, the vast majority of the money I made with those clients, and in fact the vast majority of the money I’ve ever made from copywriting — I’m guessing over 90% — came via commission-only emails I wrote to the buyers’ lists of those clients.

You don’t have to write emails if you don’t want to.

My point is simply, once again, to get yourself into a place where “saturation” becomes completely irrelevant to you, because you have formed a tight and codependent bond with a few clients. Once you’re making them and yourself a lot of money, you really don’t care what everybody else might be doing because your clients/partners would never think to go somewhere else.

To help you get there, I have decided to add in a few bonuses to the already overflowing cup of value that’s included inside 1-Person Advertorial Agency. Specifically:

#1. 26 Rules of Client Management for Copywriters, taken from my Copy Zone guide to the business side of copywriting.

Inside Copy Zone, I put the section on Client Management before Client Acquisition. As I explain in there:

“It might seem like we’re jumping ahead. But in my copywriting career so far, the biggest mistakes I’ve made and the biggest opportunities I’ve squandered were not due to being ignorant of some secret technique for client acquisition. Instead, they were due to choosing the wrong clients.”

#2. Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rapida, which digs into the topic of building long-term relationships with copywriting clients much more deeply.

#3. Ghostbuster, Nick Bandy’s 5-stage sequence for reactivating (reanimating?) dead clients or prospective clients. As Nick says on the sales page for Ghostbuster:

===

I’ve been ghosted after:

* The client replies

* I reveal my rates

* The client sends a job offer

* The client funds the first milestone

* And even AFTER getting paid and receiving a review from the client!

And it really doesn’t matter how good of a salesperson you are, or how amazing your first message was. People. Just. Ghost. It happens to everybody. But it doesn’t have to KEEP happening.

===

… and while Ghostbuster can certainly help you turn interested but ghosty prospects into actual clients, it’s even more valuable in that last case, where you’ve already done some work for a client, it went great, and then they ghost you for reasons of their own (it happens).

That’s all if you get 1-Person Advertorial Agency.

Like I said, there’s a sales page for that offer, but rather than send you there, I’ll send you to an email-style advertorial, a piece of sales copy masquerading as content, which I wrote about this offer yesterday, and which will allow you to get a good idea if this offer is for you or not:

https://bejakovic.com/announcing-son-of-sams-1-person-advertorial-agency/

Taking credit for your rock star clients’ results

January 11, 2026 by John Bejakovic

A few days ago, I was on a call with “Rebelpreneur” Gasper Crepinsek.

Over the past couple years, Gasper built an online brand teaching people AI. He’s still doing that, but this year he is going broader, using his background as an ex-Boston Consulting guy to help people build actual and sustainable businesses online.

I helped Gasper launch a $1k+ offer last month.

We worked on it together for a couple weeks, then Gasper went out and sold it to three people in his audience in a matter of days. He then started delivering the actual offer.

Result: One of Gasper’s clients already closed his own sales and is making money as a result of working just a few weeks with Gasper.

About that, Gasper said, “He’s attributing it to me, but I told him, ‘It’s all you.'”

My message to Gasper on our call, and maybe to you now, is to take credit where you’ve earned it.

Sure, it’s smart to sell to people who would succeed with or without you. When they do inevitably succeed, there’s a glow on you as well.

That doesn’t mean you can’t take some of the credit, and legitimately.

Even if somebody is an absolute rock star, you can inspire them… you can push them a bit… you can guide them through a process so they get results faster, sooner, easier, more enjoyably than they might have done otherwise.

In Gasper’s case, his client might have done something similar in another 3 or 6 months. But because of working with Gasper, he’s got another, say, $5k in the bank, today.

That’s pretty much what my situation is with Gasper as well.

The dude was succeeding and would have succeeded more, one way or another, with or without me.

But I helped him come up with a simple, attractive offer that, from the looks of it, will be his main, high-ticket, backend money-maker for the coming year. (Gasper says, “It’s crazy how much people like it,” meaning the offer).

Is having a $1k+ offer, which you can readily sell to your list, something that interests you?

If so, hit reply and let me know.

You can’t buy anything here. But if you do reply, I’ll give you a 1-page overview of the process that I guided Gasper through, so you can go do it yourself if you like.

I’m jealous of this lead gen funnel

January 4, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Last August, I promoted Igor Kheifets’s $3.99 book, Click Send Earn, as an affiliate.

$3.99? As an affiliate?

Yes. Because Igor pays out a $30 affiliate commission for each $3.99 sale.

The result was I sent two emails, and made Igor 69 sales, while making a little short of $2100 in commissions for myself.

Igor has got a super smart lead gen funnel here, and the offer he makes — $3.99 sale, $30 CPA — has gotten a buncha other list owners besides me interested in promoting.

Maliha Mannan of the Side Blogger promoted, as did Csaba Borzasi, as did Lawrence Bernstein of Ad Money Machine, with a promo that did so well last October that he is reprising it right now, just three months later.

The reason Igor can offer to pay all these folks $30 for each $3.99 sale is that he has a half dozen order form bumps and a long list of upsells once people buy the book.

Igor knows what a new customer in this funnel is worth to him, and I suspect it’s over $30. Of course, each new customer becomes worth much more when they get on Igor’s email list and are getting exposed to Igor’s back-end offers, many of them high-ticket, which Igor knows to convert.

I am frankly jealous of Igor for this funnel. I would love to have affiliates jostling and clamoring to promote either of my two books, or the new book I’m planning to publish this year.

But who’s got time and energy enough to create and dial in all these order bumps… and upsells… and copy… and funnels… and back-end offers?

Igor does, apparently.

And he does it while working 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, and having a family, and two kids, and writing and publishing comic books, and playing video games, and watching Netflix.

It wasn’t always like this.

Igor used to work 70+ hour weeks on his biz. He was grinding and hustling and making $130k a year. That might sound like a dream to you except it really wasn’t, considering how much he was working, and how little he was able to enjoy it. Plus he was making literally 3% of the $4.3 million he makes a year now.

Today, Igor works much less, gets much more done, makes much more money, and enjoys his free time without thinking about working or feeling guilty for not working.

I’m telling you this because this past November, Igor did a masterclass covering his system for getting more done in less time. He documented the exact productivity system that took him from A to B, from overworked and underpaid to having lots of free time and making a lot of money and publishing comic books.

I’ve been through Igor’s masterclass. I’m taking ideas from it. I’m applying them to what I do.

And starting tomorrow, since it’s the fresh start of a New Year, I will be promoting this system to you as well.

Of course, there will be a special deal.

Of course, there will be bonuses.

Of course, there will be a bit of a party theme, it being only a few days after New Year’s Eve. But party theme or not, the promise here is serious:

Work less, get more done, and feel zero guilt when you’re not working.

If that’s something that makes your subtle body tingle, then read my email tomorrow.

The most ironic, hypocritical, and ridiculous business model of all time?

January 2, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Here’s a fun 3-act parable for you:

ACT 1: A guy starts a business to help you cancel subscriptions to services you don’t use any more. Think AOL, or the home security at you old house, or getting milk delivered to your doorstep.

ACT 2: The guy gets a bunch of users interested in the service he is offering, but he struggles to make money with it. He tries charging a one-time fee. He tries doing affiliate deals. He briefly considers selling user data. All of it is no-go.

ACT 3: Wrestling against the irony of it all, the seeming hypocrisy, the sheer ridiculousness, he finally decides to change his business model and starts to charge… a monthly subscription. For a service that helps you cancel subscriptions.

EPILOGUE:

The guy’s company takes off. I mean, takes OFF.

Several years later, it is sold for over $1B.

ONE BILLION SHINING AND CRINKLING DOLLARS.

(True story, by the way. Look it up. The guy’s name is Haroon Mokhtarzada and the company was called TrueBill.)

Lots of lessons in this little parable I think.

I want to highlight just one today, because it is the core of the entire direct marketing business. It’s this:

Sell people more of what they have already bought, preferably earlier this month.

Seems crazy at first, but the best prospect for a tennis racket is someone who has bought a bunch of tennis rackets already, maybe even yesterday.

Same is true for books… supplements… courses… sneakers… coaching… and apparently, subscription services.

Which gets me to wondering.

It’s January 2nd. I mean, just the second day of the year.

What significant purchases have you made already this year? Write in and let me know. I’m… curious.

Did I live up to my 2025 “themes”?

January 1, 2026 by John Bejakovic

Each January 1, I write an email reviewing my (usually failed) goals of the past year, and setting several new goals for the year to come, which I will then… well, let’s take it one step at a time.

Rewind back to January 1 2025. I wrote then that I’m kind of over goal setting, but for the sake of an interesting email, I chose 3 goals, or rather “themes,” for 2025:

#1. Recurring income (it’s clear enough what that means)

#2. Less of me (meaning, getting better at making offers that don’t rely entirely on my personal authority and charm to sell)

#3. Tech (developing software tools that I could sell or give away or use myself)

How did I do?

On the tech front, absolutely nothing. If anything, I’ve become even more of a Luddite than I was a year ago.

Once upon a time, I worked as a software engineer, but I’ve realized dabbling in programming and software development a waste of my time now. Instead, if a good opportunity comes along, I will partner with people who want to fiddle around with code.

As for my other two themes, I actually did pretty good.

I had a good chunk of my income this year in the form of recurring income (both via payment plans on high-ticket offers, and via continuity products like Daily Email Habit).

As for “less of me,” I’ve learned a lot and implemented a good amount about making offers that are attractive even to people who don’t really know me and love me via these emails. Ironically, I think the success of my “I endorse YOU” auction, with the $31k winning bid, was proof of that.

Now fast forward back to the future, specifically, to today. What about the coming year, 2026?

Over the past days and weeks, no clear theme or two or three for 2026 came to my mind. So this morning, I sat down and made a list of 10 things I want to get done with my Bejako Business in 2026. Here they are:

1. Publish a new book

2. Make $1M in auction revenue (selling my stuff and others’ stuff, to my audience and to other audiences)

3. Develop a series of high ticket offers that actually sell, like [censored] etc.

4. Stick to a monthly schedule of 1) newsletter ad or list swap, 2) in-house offer, 3) zero-delivery offer

5. Keep building up Monetization Mastermind (my invite-only group of list owners who want to partner up on various deals)

6. Keep experimenting with Daily Email House

7. Grow the list to 8k

8. Build up my status more

9. Partner with more people

10. Keep uncovering new bubbles of people and connecting them to each other

That’s a lot. Some of it is pretty reachable, or at least has fuzzy enough criteria of success to sound like it.

Some of it is ambitious, or even very ambitious.

Is it all possible to do it all, or a large part?

I believe it is. I’ll tell you how:

Double up and triple up. In other words, make everything do double or triple work, and feed into other things that I want to do.

For example, the new book I want to publish is directly connected to the high-ticket offer I am currently working on. The two will feed off each other.

Having a new book, as well as a high-ticket offer that sells well (inshallah), will be status-boosting.

And all this can feed into more auctions and partners and connections… and and so on.

You might say this sounds like the best-case scenario, and not like the worst- or even likely-case scenario.

I agree. So how to improve my chances?

How to actually double up and triple up, consistently, throughout the year, as I keep working on different projects, and as life starts getting in the way, and I as a person change?

My answer to this, which is the one point of today’s email, finally, which can be relevant to you, is:

More planning and research and preparation.

Specifically, I heard somebody smart and successful recommend recently to schedule “regular thinking time,” and to treat it like a non-negotiable meeting with yourself.

So if there is a theme to my 2026, “thinking time” is it.

And as for whether I will reach my 10 goals… or fail on most or on all counts… stay tuned, and maybe you will have the opportunity to nod and smirk in case you see me struggling… or nod and smile if you see me succeed.

Also, I got an offer for you today:

On the one hand, I believe “thinking time” is best done alone.

On the other hand, it’s inevitably true that other people can help keep us accountable in ways that we cannot keep ourselves (well, most of us, Daniel Throssell is an exception).

Maybe more importantly, other people can immediately spot and point out blind spots in our own thinking that we might never spot.

So here’s my offer to you:

Would some kind of organized and shared “thinking time” be useful to you?

I’m imagining it as a regularly scheduled call with myself and other people, where we can all share what we’re working on and how we’re thinking about proceeding.

But it doesn’t have to be like that, and maybe you have better ideas.

In any case, if organized, structured, regular, and shared “thinking time” might be useful to you, write in and let me know to say so, and what it could help you with, and how you imagine it looking.

Thanks in advance.