Freedom

“Thank God I’ve missed my big chance”

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A couple weeks ago, I made the mistake of looking up a clip from The Godfather on YouTube.

Since then, YouTube has been serving me up a steady diet of Al Pacino interviews, which I of course have allowed myself to be “force-fed.” At least I found out the following curious anecdote:

During the shooting of a scene in the Godfather, Pacino was supposed to jump into a moving car. But he missed the car and almost broke his ankle.

Pacino said later he was shocked by the feeling of relief that passed over him.

“Thank you God,” he said as he lay on the ground. “You’re gonna get me out of this film.”

Pacino had felt like an underling on set, unwanted and unfit for the role of Michael Corleone.

“This injury could be my release from that prison,” Pacino said later.

Of course, that’s not how it ended up. The director, Francis Ford Coppola, liked Pacino too well. That, plus a bunch of corticosteroid injections, meant Pacino stayed in the movie.

In that way, the career of Al Pacino – from young theater actor, talented, unknown, but hopeful, to massive Hollywood star and international celeb, jaded, paranoid, and alcoholic — mirrored the progression of Michael Corleone in the Godfather — from the modest, good, patriotic son with plans of a respectable career, to ruthless head of the Corleone mob family, addicted to control and power, even at the cost of everything in his family and inside himself.

Before I get you too depressed, I wanna make it clear:

This email is not about the vanity of pursuing any kind of achievement or success in life.

Over the next few days, I’m promoting Tom Grundy’s Subtraction Method training.

Tom’s story is that he quit his high-powered London banking job in order to seek enlightenment. Enlightenment found, Tom ended up going back to the bank.

Curious, right?

The first time around at the bank was miserable, says Tom. The second time around has been enjoyable, stress-free, and even fulfilling.

What made the difference is what Tom calls the Subtraction Method.

The Subtraction Method is not about the kind of minimalism that involves living in a hut in the backwoods of Montana, shooting and skinning rabbits and melting snow for drinking water.

Rather, it’s about a different kind of minimalism, one that has to do with ideas and attitudes.

The end result can be that you achieve all the external success you think you want now, and you do it on such terms that you’re not eaten out from inside like Michael Corleone or Al Pacino.

Or the end result can be you don’t achieve the external success you think you want now, and you find out that that’s perfectly fine, because what you thought you wanted is not what you actually want.

Here is where I start waving my hands and waffling and mumbling a little too much. Because the Subtraction Method is not my area of expertise. Rather it’s Tom’s area of expertise.

That’s why I’d like to invite you to sign up to his training. The training is free. It’s happening next Wednesday, Nov 6, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. I’ll be there. If you’d like to be there as well, you can register to get in at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

Announcing: Subtraction Method

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There’s a link at the bottom of this email and honestly I’d like you to go click it and sign up for the free training that’s waiting for you on the other side.

But first a bit o’ background:

This free training is being put on by Tom Grundy, who at one point was in my Write & Profit coaching program.

I’ve mentioned Tom a few times before in these emails because he writes interesting and engaging emails himself, which I read pretty much daily.

Tom also happens to be a London banker with an unusual career trajectory:

He quit his high-powered London banking job because stress and misery… he went in search of fulfillment… he found fulfillment… and then he went back to his high-powered London banking job, because he actually kinda likes the work and the people and the environment now.

Tom’s free training is about what’s allowed him to find sense and satisfaction along with success. This is what he calls the Subtraction Method.

Earlier this year, Tom approached me about promoting a workshop about “mindset.”

I tentatively agreed because 1) I like Tom and I know he knows stuff about self-development and psychology, and 2) I know Tom had already delivered a weeks-long series of workshops on mindset at his company Lloyds Bank. These workshops went so well he’s been rerunning them at Lloyds and even getting asked to do them at other banks too.

Still, I agreed only tentatively, because to be honest I’m a little repulsed by the entire idea of “mindset.”

In particular, I imagined Tom’s workshops were about wholesome 1920s topics like the power of positive thinking… and how to set goals… and clutching to the idea of your children’s college fund as you try to reframe the humiliation of, say, dancing on TikTok to build up your 7-figure personal brand.

But!

It turns out Tom teaches none of those things in his workshops. In fact, he teaches pretty much the opposite, which again he calls the Subtraction Method.

Tom explained his Subtraction Method to me last month. I found that I can get behind his approach 100%.

Tom’s Subtraction Method matches the vague conclusions I’ve been able to reach in my own lifelong search for some sort of understanding and management of my own feelings and internal drives. It’s just that Tom has much more specific and concrete ideas about this, where I’ve only caught some occasional glimpses.

So there you go:

Tom’s free training for you on the Subtraction Method, with my 100% endorsement and in fact personal interest (I will be there on the training too).

As for the details:

1. This training is happening live over Zoom on Wednesday November 6 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST.

2. Tom will be offering a paid series of group workshops on the back of this one-off free training. These workshops I imagine will follow the ones he’s been putting on at his bank.

That said, this one-off live training is not just a tease or a sales pitch for those workshops, because Tom will reveal fully the concepts behind the Subtraction Method.

In other words, if you wanna work through those concepts with a group of people, with Tom at the helm, you will have that option following this one-off training.

If on the other hand, you just want to learn about the Subtraction Method just for curiosity’s sake, or so you can try it out in your own life, in your own good time, by yourself, then this training will give you all the info you need.

3. You might have doubts about what a London banker can teach you about fulfillment and achievement and happiness. After all, odds are you yourself are not a London banker. You might live in a very different kind of world and do a very different kind of work.

My best response is to suggest you go sign up for Tom’s training, and then read a few days’ worth of Tom’s emails, which will start landing in your inbox.

If Tom’s emails really say nothing to you, then skip the training and unsubscribe.

If on the other hand, you find yourself both amused and intrigued by what Tom has to say, the way that I do when I read Tom’s stuff, then you won’t have nothin’ more to do, except show up on Zoom on Wednesday Nov 6, and hear Tom explain the Subtraction Method.

If you’d like to sign up now:

​https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

The myth of mindfulness for the overworked and overstressed

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True story:

Before my mom retired, she was a pediatrician.

​​The small pediatric hospital where she worked kept piling on more and more patients, year after year, while not increasing the number of doctors.

My mom, and all the other doctors at the hospital, had to work longer and longer hours, hurry more and stress more, sleep less and think less.

Eventually, a kind of doctors’ mutiny formed. The doctors pushed back against the administration, saying that this was irresponsible, that they cannot handle the load any more, that patient care was suffering.

The administrators listened and nodded with understanding. “You’re absolutely right,” they said. “Something has to change.”

And so next week, the administration brought in a mindfulness coach to conduct a mindfulness training, and teach the overworked and overstressed doctors to breathe in more deeply, express their gratitude more freely, and work more efficiently during their 13-hour shifts.

I’m telling you this because maybe you’re telling yourself, “I’m not getting enough done. I’m too slow.”

And maybe you are — God knows I am.

But maybe you are just working too much. If so, no amount of productivity and efficiency training will help, and the only real solution is simply to work less.

This isn’t about mindfulness, but a change in how you make money… the kinds of clients or customers you work with… how much you charge them… and where you draw the line about what’s acceptable and what’s not.

Those are big questions. I won’t pretend I have all the answers for you, or a push-button Jack-in-the-box that will give you those answers.

But since this is a newsletter about marketing, let me point out some relevant facts:

– It’s easier to have time if you can sell to hundreds or thousands of people in parallel

– It’s easier to charge more if you have a captive pocket of people who look to you as an authority

– It’s easier to draw the line if you know for certain you’re not beholden to any one customer or client, because there’s more of them out there, and you know how to get at them

There are different ways to take advantage of these facts, and to make them work for you.

My personal choice is to have a small online audience, in the form of an email list, and to write them daily emails, and to make offers to them on occasion.

I’ll have an offer about building up an email list soon. Meanwhile, if you want to know how I write emails, and make offers inside them, and how you can do the same:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Why I sent you an empty email yesterday

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This morning, I woke up to an inbox full of messages that read:

“Hmm??”

“Huh??”

“Wha—??”

“I’m sure others are writing to tell you the same, but hngh??”

“Why?? Why?? WHY?? I need do know”

The story is that I sent out an email last night with the subject line, “Why is Alec Baldwin telling me to Always Be Closing?”

That email went out with no body copy, but only with the placeholder text that reads “Text goes here.”

Two things about this strange event:

#1. It was unintentional, and I blame ActiveCampaign for it, as I do for many other things.

I wrote my email, put it into ActiveCampaign, and scheduled it. For some reason, ActiveCampaign didn’t save the body copy.

This has happened a few times already. Each time before, I caught it at the last minute by noticing something’s off in the tiny preview window at the end. Last night I didn’t.

#2. I am amazed by how little I am bothered by this event. Maybe it’s because it’s genuinely a tech muckup out of my control, and not something that I feel responsible for. Or maybe I have just been sending emails long enough that I have built up a pachydermous outer layer that protects me from the slings and arrows and “huh??”s of the world.

So my brief inspirational message to you:

If you are afraid of writing something and publishing it because you think you might muck it up, and everyone will know, then do it anyhow, because 1) you will muck it up, 2) everyone will know, and 3) eventually you won’t be bothered by it.

Also, if you’d like to know why Alec Baldwin is telling me to Always Be Closing, here’s that message, with the body copy included this time:

https://bejakovic.com/why-is-alec-baldwin-telling-me-to-always-be-closing/

Why do I keep linking to Amazon???

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I got a question from a reader last week, which I didn’t realize until just now had a slight dig at me towards the end:

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I noticed that you linked to Amazon quite a lot in recent weeks … curious about your rationale?

Engagement, commission, or simply being unpredictable (ultimately become predictable)?

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How’s this for predictable:

It is well known, by anybody who knows anything about Internet marketing, that linking to Amazon, particularly to books on Amazon, particularly to books on Amazon that feature word “eskimo” in the title, increases Gmail deliverability. This in turn translates to higher engagement and greater retention on expensive continuity programs like the ones I don’t sell.

No. Of course not. It’s nothing like that.

There’s no kind of tactical reason for why I’ve linked to a few Amazon books over the past few weeks.

I did it because the books were valuable and useful to me, and I thought they could be valuable and useful to you.

But beyond that, there is another, more personal reason.

I could explain that reason in my own words.

But the fact is, somebody has already explained it for me, in words that are so good thath they have stuck with me for 6+ years now, and that come ringing back in my head at certain key moments in my life.

If you’d like to find out those words, and maybe learn something that can help you run your business and your life better for the long term, then read the following, which is not an Amazon book:

https://www.psychotactics.com/greater-profits/

2 words I like to be reminded of every morning

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I was getting ready to shave this morning — foam, razor, face were all ready to go — when a yellow sticky note floated down from my bathroom mirror and landed in the sink.

“Oh no,” I said, “it’s all wet and ruined now.”

I put that yellow sticky note up on my bathroom mirror three months ago. It survived until now. It did well to live that long. It has now been replaced by a new yellow sticky note, which has the same two words on it:

“PRODUCER MOJO”

Three months ago, I got back into Travis Sago’s world. I wrote about Travis a couple times over the past week. In case the name still doesn’t ring a bell, Travis is basically an Internet marketing dude who’s been in the game some 20 years, maybe longer.

It was Travis’s advice to take a sticky note, write PRODUCER MOJO on it, and put it somewhere where you’ll see it regularly.

The idea is to become the marketing version of a Hollywood producer.

Hollywood producers don’t really “do” anything. They don’t direct. They don’t write. They don’t act. They don’t take a razor blade and cut rolls of film in two and then glue them back together.

Instead, producers… produce, whatever that means. My best guess is that they bring together other talented or resourceful people, and guide them towards some sort of common, hopefully worthwhile goal.

I’d actually first heard Travis promote “PRODUCER MOJO” four years ago, during my first visit to his world.

At that time, the idea of being a producer didn’t appeal to me.

“I like to write,” I told myself. “I don’t want to trade that for managing a bunch of people.”

Somehow, the idea is more appealing now. Maybe because I’ve aged a few years and I’ve had some experience running an Internet marketing business myself.

Or maybe, because I realized that producing doesn’t have to equal managing — maybe it can mean roping in an effective manager.

Anyways, that’s the idea I wanted to share with you today:

PRODUCER MOJO

… because there are plenty of people who have written thrilling stories, or who have tearjerking acting skills, or who just don’t know where to invest the oodles of money that are pouring out of their pants pockets.

There’s no law that says you have to ignore all this, and instead make a movie that you write, film, act every role in, and of course, fund. And don’t forget the special effects and makeup that you also do yourself.

I mean, you can do all those things.

But it’s not the only way.

And if you want to be reminded of that, then get a yellow sticky note, write PRODUCER MOJO on it, and put it somewhere where you’ll see it.

Or simply reply to this email. Because maybe you have some assets already. So do I. There’s no guarantee we’ll end up making a movie together, but if we talk, and compare what we each have, who knows where that could lead.

Work on your business and not on delegating, systems, or automation

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Two nights ago I finally finished the 40-page pamphlet I’d been reading for three months, titled Leading With Your Head. It’s about the use of misdirection in magic. It ends with this:

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Tape your performances in front of an audience (either audio or video). Sit down and take notes. What works best for the audience? What doesn’t work (that you thought would)? Is there dead time you can eliminate? What needs to be improved? Keep the material that works, and concentrate on improving the weaknesses. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. It’s simply an excuse to avoid addressing more serious problems. Rehearse your improvements, then repeat the whole process again.

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It’s popular advice to say, work on your business, not in it.

The typical meaning of this is to delegate, build systems, automate the work. I’m sure that’s fine.

But there are ways of making a living — like my own — that are not about hiring and managing other people, not about scaling endlessly, and certainly not about automation. After all, what’s the sense in getting a magic-performing robot to go on stage and perform your magic show for you — if performing magic is what you like to do?

“Work on your business, not in it” is good advice. But in my personal case, I like the meaning above, the one from Leading With Your Head.

Plan and reflect, in addition to performing. It makes you better at what you like to do, and is in fact fun and enjoyable in itself, at least in my experience. And in my experience, it can be profitable too.

Last June 9th, I did an instance of this kind of working on my business. I opened up a text file on my computer and made a list, “10 things I’ve learned to do well over the past year.”

Item no. 2 on the list was “2. write [what I later came to call Most Valuable] emails.”

A couple weeks later, because of that small observation, I created a live training about Most Valuable Emails.

A month later, based on the surprising sales of the swipe file of Most Valuable Emails I offered at the end of the live training, I decided to create a standalone Most Valuable Email course.

I was hesitant — I figured anybody interested had already seen my presentation and wouldn’t buy. But again, I was surprised.

​​4.7% of my list bought the Most Valuable Email course during the launch. And interest hasn’t dropped off since, but has in fact gone up.

​​To date, 5.3% of my list has bought Most Valuable Email, though my list has grown by over 41% since last September, when I first launched the MVE course.

Great, right? — when you look at it from the perspective of how a typical info product sells. 2% or 3% of a qualified list is considered good.

But on the other hand, it also means 94.7% of my list has not yet bought Most Valuable Email.

​​Perhaps this includes you too.

There are many legit reasons why you might not want to buy Most Valuable Email. I list some of them right in the deck copy of the sales page.

On the other hand, there are also several legit reasons why you might want to buy Most Valuable Email. I list those in the deck copy as well.

In case you’d like to read that, and see and decide for yourself whether Most Valuable Email could be most valuable for you too, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Daniel Throssell is right

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“Whether liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or the scabbard? Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur. Ye are more unwise, said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded, therefore keep well the scabbard always with you.”

Australia’s best copywriter, Daniel Throssell, wrote an email two days ago in response to my own email from New Year’s Day.

Daniel’s subject line read, “John Bejakovic is wrong.”

In his email, Daniel started off by saying he and I are on good terms and that he has helped me before. And he’s absolutely right.

In 2021, I had been stubbornly writing this newsletter in silence for three years. With one email to his own list, Daniel changed that. In the three days after he first promoted me, I tripled my list size, and made a bunch of money as a result.

Daniel has also promoted me since, and every time, I’ve gotten a big boost in new subscribers. I’ve written before to say how grateful I am for that, and how impressed with the influence that Daniel has over his readers.

But back to Daniel’s email from two days ago. After that “we’re good” intro, Daniel went on to the heart of it:

A five-point argument that paid newsletters are a desirable or even superior info product. That’s opposed to what I wrote in New Year’s Day email, where I said that nobody really wants a newsletter, not without lots of bribes, indoctrination, or shaming.

If you haven’t done so yet, I’ll leave you to read Daniel’s email and see if you are convinced by his arguments. I’ve heard from readers on both sides.

Some said Daniel is a magician with words and that he turned it around brilliantly. Others said they found Daniel’s arguments unpersuasive.

As for me, I will only say that, even after reading Daniel’s email, I am still not selling a paid newsletter, or planning to do so.

But Daniel is selling a paid newsletter. In fact, he wrote recently that adding this paid newsletter to his business is one of the best things he’s ever done.

And that’s why he’s absolutely right to publicly fight for his position, to make a black-and-white case of it, and even turn it into an issue of what’s noble or not.

If you want to be seen as a leader, or if you have a kingdom to protect, then Daniel’s example is well-worth studying and following.

Like King Arthur, you have to mount your horse, brandish your sword Excalibur, and lead the charge against any flying serpent that crosses your borders and into your marches, before the ugly beast has a chance to threaten your heartland.

If I were in Daniel’s position, I would have to do the same. But fortunately for me, that’s not the position I am in.

Like I’ve said before, I don’t look at what I’m doing here primarily as a business. Yes, these emails have been making me money, and sometimes good money. But this is not only project I’m working on, and it’s not the main way I’m looking to make money.

That non-dependence is like the scabbard of Excalibur for me. It means I don’t lose no blood, no matter the wounding things anybody may write about me, about the content of my emails, or about the offers I promote.

And if you value your freedom more than ten kingdoms, then this kind of non-dependence is something to keep always with you.

Moving on. I have tribute to collect from various places around the world. Meanwhile, if you would like to read more essays I’ve written, then sign up to my daily email newsletter. Click ye here and fill out the form that magically appears like Merlin out of a cloud of smoke.