Getting Rich

How not to forget what matters and even put it to use

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I’m in Bologna this week, sitting around parks, drinking Aperols, eating mortadella sandwiches.

I know. I know. Bear with in my time of trouble.

In the mornings, before this intense laying about begins, I also do a bit of work, which includes opening my inbox and reading 2-3 of the dozens of emails that have piled up over night.

That’s how yesterday I came across an email by a guy named Henrik Karlsson, who wrote on Substack about “How not to forget what matters.”

I want to share Karlsson’s answer with you today, because it’s kind of what everything is about.

Says Karlsson, reading is not enough to make a change that you want to make in your life.

Neither is making a resolution to do so.

Instead, it takes habitual practice and revisiting and resetting to the direction you want to go in.

But how to do that rather than letting it slip away? That’s where Karlsson introduces an interesting practice that dates back a couple thousand years:

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During the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, there spread a practice known as hypomnēmata, a type of notetaking system, used as a tool for meditation, in which the writer would store quotes from books they had read. Each day, often in the morning, the notetaker would open their notebook and look for a passage relevant to something they were struggling with, and then they would meditate on that—unpacking it, making the idea top of mind, ensuring it was alive in them.

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I never before heard about hypomnēmata, but I wrote it down in my own notetaking system, which I have been keeping for years now, with the exact same goal, of not forgetting what matters.

I’ve since built an entire journaling and notetaking system around it, so I don’t just pile up notes, but actually come back to them, and make some use of them instead of just meditating on them.

This system has served me very well over the years, and has saved me hundreds of hours of time I would have wasted otherwise… made me hundreds of thousands of dollars I wouldn’t have made otherwise… and has simply turned me into a healthier, wealthier, wiser Bejako than I might have been otherwise.

I eventually packed up everything I have learned about notetaking and journaling and getting value out of notes into a course I called Insight Exposed. It’s not a course I sell regularly, but earlier this year, Maliha Mannan of The Side Blogger promoted Insight Exposed to her list. In an email with the subject line, “If you buy only one course this year,” Maliha wrote:

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This is the course (called Insight Exposed) in which John literally lays out the secret behind his creative genius. It’s a course on how his writing brain works.

How does he collect ideas? Which ideas does he think are worth collecting? How does he retrieve those ideas when he is writing? How does he connect multiple, seemingly random, ideas to create something new every time he sits down to write an email? And how does he make them so damn persuasive that even complete strangers are moved to give him their attention… and money?

That’s what the course is about: the persuasive writing brain-map of one of the most persuasive writers I know.

A disclaimer is necessary here… See, it is a dense course… as expected of such a course. And I recommend that you take your time going through it. Take notes, and then go through it again (I myself have gone through it thrice in the last few weeks).

But it’s worth the time and effort because I don’t know of many people who are as effectively convincing with their words as John is, and seeing how his brain works will give you ways to be more effective in your own thinking, idea collecting, and writing.

To be clear… this is NOT a how-to-be-a-good-copywriter course.

This is literally a course on how John cultivates his own ideas and creativity.

And as a fellow writer and email marketer, I will tell you now, I have never gone through a course quite like this one and gotten so much out of it. That includes John’s other courses, and all of John’s courses are pretty effing fantastic already.

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Maliha recommends taking your time with Insight Exposed. I will make one further recommendation, or rather two.

This course won’t do you any good unless you actually put it into practice. Not only collecting notes, but also connecting them, revisiting them, and ideally, turning them into some kind of content of your own. Such as for example, writing your own daily emails.

Which brings me to my Hogwarts of Influence event. It ends tomorrow at 12 midnight PST. It brings together a bunch of my offers at 3 different tiers, designed to turn you into a persuasion wizard of greater and greater power.

At the Dumbledore tier, you can get your hands on Insight Exposed, in all its dense glory, which I don’t normally sell.

At the Dumbledore tier, you can also get two years of Daily Email Habit, which is my service to help you turn your notes and ideas and experiences into emails that make you money and save you time on sales calls and make you smarter and happier as a person.

There’s a lot inside Hogwarts of Influence. That’s my fault.

It’s also why this offer ends tomorrow.

If you want to take advantage of the most generous offer I will make this year, you will have to wade through all the many things I am bundling inside.

For the full info, before the clock runs out:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

The opportunity seeker’s way to success

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I’m a bit stressed as I write this. It’s Saturday morning. Tomorrow and Monday I’m going on a mini-vacation. Also on Monday, I have a deadline for the advertorial I promised to deliver to my first client/partner in years.

The advertorial that’s due Monday is, err, 75% of the way done?

I have a bunch of research, a bunch of notes, and a bunch of very rough AI drafts. Still, I’m far from having something I can give to the client. And I have today to finish it.

In moments like this, I ask myself, “Why do I do this to myself?”

And the answer comes, “Because I would never get anything done otherwise.”

I have long had this theory that everybody who succeeds in direct marketing is an opportunity seeker at heart.

Opportunity seeker = somebody who chases bright shiny objects, much like a bee that flits from flower to flower.

I think the business owners and the copywriters and everybody else who somehow makes it in direct marketing are first and foremost opportunity seekers, meaning that they get sucked in by marketing that promises you hot new riches now, even if you have no time or money to invest and cannot count past 5.

I myself am a veteran opportunity seeker.

It started in high school when I responded to a direct response ad in the back of a newspaper, which promised a lucrative and enjoyable new career (forestry service), without any qualifications, presumably even without finishing high school.

I have since spent tens of thousands of dollars buying various stuff that promises to be a hot new opportunity.

You might think I’d know better by now. I don’t know better.

Anyways, here’s my point for you:

If, like me, you are an opportunity seeker, then make it work for you. Take the psychological levers that you know can be pulled to make you act, and pull them yourself.

At the heart of every opportunity pitch are three words:

1. NEW

2. OPPORTUNITY

3. NOW

The NOW is why this opportunity wasn’t available yesterday, and why it won’t be available tomorrow. It’s enforced in opportunity marketing via scarcity and, more typically, urgency.

You can enforce NOW on yourself in the same way, by setting deadlines for yourself, like I did with that advertorial I told you about.

(Of course, for a self-imposed deadline to be meaningful, you need some kind of public accountability, like clients or customers who are expecting stuff to be delivered.)

The OPPORTUNITY part boils down to the idea of SOMETHING FOR NOTHING.

The fact is, we will all have to work in some way until the day we die. Even if you make all the money in the world, you will still have to invest and manage and secure that money.

But nobody wants to hear that. I certainly don’t.

So I embark on projects that promise to be bolt-on opportunities, things I can work on for a bit, get up to speed, and then simply profit from for the rest of my life, without sacrificing anything I’ve already got. Of course, it never really works out that way, but so what? It gets me moving.

And the NEW, of course.

If you’re an opportunity seeker like me, the familiar and old hat becomes invisible to you quickly.

This is where the danger lies, because the familiar and old hat is really what works, while something genuinely new is very likely to fail, or at least to fail when you try to set it up.

The way I deal with this is to introduce novelty WITHIN familiar and old-hat structures. Such as for example, daily emailing.

I’ve been doing this daily email every day for almost 8 years now.

Commitment and discipline, right? No. Novelty.

I never know what I’m gonna write about. It kind of stresses me out and excites me each morning. Today’s idea came (of course) during the shower.

So there you go:

1. Look at the marketing that’s working on getting you to move.

2. Figure out what done it.

3. Then apply it yourself in some way, to achieve whatever success you want to achieve in life.

Are you an opportunity seeker like me?

Do you want novelty? Do you want something for nothing? Do you want a reason to do it now?

If so, then daily emails might be for you. Like I told you, they work for me.

There’s public accountability. There’s the excitement of something new each day. And there’s something for nothing in the form of all the collateral content that gets produced, which you can feed into courses, books, paid newsletters, templates, apps, IP, which you can sell forever, without ever touching it again!

If you wanna get started with daily emails, today, I got a hot new opportunity for you:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Going it on your own

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Yesterday, in a restaurant in Barcelona’s Eixample district, I organized a “direct response dinner.”

6 people (ok, 6 guys) where there, all of whom work in direct response.

There was a copywriter for an ecom retention agency… there was the owner of a big dropshipping business… there was the head of ops for a lead gen agency… there was the owner of a dating info biz… there was Thom Benny’s business partner Elmo… and there was me.

Over fish curry and ground beef, we talked about what’s up in life and business.

Halfway through the dinner, we switched seats to switch up the conversation.

At the end, everybody stood around outside the restaurant and talked some more and exchanged contacts. I announced I would make this a regular event.

A few years ago, I gave a presentation in Brian Kurtz’s Titans XL group. After that presentation, Brian and I exchanged a couple emails, and he invited me to join Titans myself.

I wrote Brian to say thanks, that I can see Titans is a good group, but that I know from past experience that I don’t function well or last long in groups. I said that even though I know it’s not smart, I always end up going it alone. To which Brian replied:

“Not that I need to teach you anything, John…but whether it’s my group or someone else’s (or one you manufacture on your own), “going it on your own” is a huge mistake.”

That has stuck with me for years. It was a key motivator for why I decided to create my Daily Email House community, and later, why created the Monetization Mastermind. It’s also why decided to organize the dinner last night.

I’m kind of weird and awkward whenever I’m invited to other people’s stuff. I don’t really participate. I look for any excuse to skulk out.

I could tell myself that’s silly, and wait for myself to change and become a better, more sociable, more well-adjusted person.

Or I could simply work with what I’ve got, and figure out how to do something with it. In my case, that’s meant following Brian’s advice, and “manufacturing” groups and communities of my own.

I’m telling you this because maybe it applies to you as well.

Maybe what applies is the specific idea that, if you don’t function well in other people’s groups, then you should manufacture one of your own.

Or maybe what applies is the broader idea to stop waiting for yourself to become a better person in order to get what you want. (Business coach Rich Schefren phrases this as, “Put your business goals ahead of your self-development goals.”)

Final point:

I personally knew everybody I invited to dinner last night, with the exception of James, the head of ops for a lead gen agency.

I had never met James before or interacted with him in any way. I invited him because he is inside Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin group, and I figured anybody who is in Ronin is ok in my book and is worth meeting. (James turned out to be great.)

Royalty Ronin is the only group I’m a member of in any meaningful way, and the only group I’ve managed to stick around in for more than a few weeks. (I’ve been in Ronin for over two years now.)

That’s not because there’s magic inside Ronin that makes me into a chipper and regular participant. (I rarely post and I comment even more rarely.)

Rater, I stay inside Ronin and I keep lurking there because I’ve learned so much from Travis Sago, both via the ton of expensive trainings that he makes available for free inside Ronin… and via observing Travis and what he does. (This is stuff that might or might not make it into future expensive trainings, but it’s yours free if you only pay attention.)

If you wanna see if Ronin could work for you, whether you participate in groups or not:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you do make it past free trial and stay inside Ronin, write me an email and let me know. I have some bonuses with your name on them.

Hundreds of course buyers… one implementer

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In reply to my email yesterday, the original Crazy Email Lady, Liza Schermann, writes:

“Ha! This offer sounds eerily similar to what Sean Ferres teaches in his AI Ads Lab. I wonder if this guy came through that program.”

The context is that yesterday I wrote about a guy who is getting clients for his ad copywriting services by running ads on FB. The offer he’s promoting via his ads is, “I’ll beat your best ad or it’s free.”

Liza’s message got me curious that maybe there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of people all running eerily similar offers, all coming out of this AI Ads Lab?

Facebook ad library is very unfriendly to searching. But after about 10 minutes of poking around with various terms like “beat your best ad” and “or you don’t pay,” I found exactly… two advertisers making anything like the offer I told you about.

The first is the guy I wrote about yesterday. The second is some agency that’s offering to create scripts for 5 video ads, and in case they don’t get a winner, you pay nothing (in other words, it’s really a different offer).

Strange, right? Really strange.

What I mean is, apparently there’s a guy teaching this strategy for getting clients for writing ad copy.

Also, the strategy clearly works (as I wrote yesterday, the dude who’s running these ads has had close to 70 takers in the past ~6 months).

And yet, there is exactly ONE guy (well, at least that I could find) who is executing this strategy.

What about all those other people who went through the AI Ads Lab course?

I’m sure they have good things to say about the course. I’m sure some of them have consumed the material all the way through. I’m sure a few have even gotten results, maybe with some other client-getting strategies. Still, I would bet my left lung, kidney, or testicle that the vast majority never even consumed the material, much less implemented it, or pursued it consistently enough to see results.

The fact is, ideas have zero value unless you put them to use in some way.

I’m telling you this because I’m currently promoting an implementation cohort that’s using the 1-Person Advertorial Agency course as a blueprint.

I’ve heard lots of good things about 1PAA over the past few days. People say it’s a great course. Some have gone through it all the way. Some have even put it into action, at least partly. But the majority haven’t pursued it enough to write a single advertorial, much less to get a paying client.

That’s where my cohort comes in.

The cohort is not free. In fact, it’s expensive.

We will be following 1PAA, both for advertorial-writing and client-getting.

If you join me, you get my feedback and input, both on advertorial-writing and client-getting.

The immediate goal is to get you to complete an advertorial, and get a client who will run it.

The long-term goal is to get you to make $10k from advertorial work. My offer is I’ll keep working with you until you get there.

We start next week. In case you’re interested, reply now.

When breakthroughs fail

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If, like me, you’re into pop psychology, you’ve probably heard the following (ahem) fascinating, dramatic, and yet true story:

A UFO cult was expecting a UFO to land in Chicago on Dec 21 1954, and whisk away the believers before a huge tidal wave wiped out the face of the Earth.

December 21 came and went. No UFO came. No tidal wave came either.

The UFO cult was headed by a woman named Dorothy Martin. She was in contact with the aliens via automatic writing (and sometimes over the phone).

In the hours after the supposed UFO arrival failed to materialize, Martin got the message that the aliens had decided to spare the Earth because of the good work of the UFO cult in spreading the word.

That’s the dramatic part. Here’s the fascinating part:

The UFO cult, which until then had been very secretive, very hostile to publicity, very closed to outsiders, suddenly went on a PR blitz, announcing to the world the good news. It was no longer enough for the cultists to be in direct contact with powerful aliens who had decided to spare the Earth from destruction — everybody else had to know about it too.

I’ve written about this before in my newsletter. I got the story from Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, in the chapter on social proof. Cialdini in turn got the story from the book When Prophecy Fails, a classic of pop psychology, which was written by the researchers who infiltrated the UFO cult in order to study it.

Only one problem:

I was wrong. Cialdini was wrong. I mean, we were wrong to report this as a fascinating, dramatic, yet true story.

Today, with recently dug up reports and research, it appears that the original research was tainted, exaggerated, or even made up. As many as half the cult members were actually researchers who infiltrated the cult. One of the infiltrating researchers became a cult leader, and told people to say and do things that would look good in the book. Several of the legit cult members changed their tune and walked after the UFO failed to show, completely negating the claims of “cognitive dissonance,” a term this book introduced.

Over the past few years, it has seemed like all the dramatic, memorable social science stories were invented:

* The marshmallow test, in which kids who could delay marshmallow gratification did dramatically better later in life. (The result doesn’t hold up when you control for some obvious other variables.)

* The Harvard “power poses” research, where standing like Superman — head high, arms akimbo, legs apart — raises your testosterone and lowers your cortisol. (Sloppy data collection and wishful statistics.)

* The Stanford prison experiment, where ordinary people suddenly turned into monsters when put into positions of power. (The “guards” were apparently told what part to play.)

So what’s left? What do we have when all the good stories are gone?

What’s left is a mountain of boring, incremental progress, unintelligible and uninteresting to anybody except the experts in the field, which grows decade by decade, century by century.

Harumph. If you didn’t like that, I’m afraid you’re gonna hate this:

I’ve been listening to a bunch of big-time, behind-the-scenes marketers who do not primarily make their money by teaching or by via their personal brands. (These interviews are part of bonus #5 in my recent Tour de Commandments bonus bundle.)

One thing I’ve noticed these behind-the-scenes, big-time marketers say is some version of:

“There’s really no secret to the success of this funnel/offer/business. It’s just been a bunch of small and incremental improvements and fixes over time, which added up.”

It’s instinctive for all of us to search for the dramatic, memorable breakthrough that upends our entire understanding of how things work. It’s a good story. Our brains like it. It sticks in the memory and it invites us to share it with others.

The real story though is about smaller, less dramatic, even boring improvements that accumulate.

I’ll leave you today with that idea, and by pointing you to my Most Valuable Email training.

The Most Valuable Email trick, which I teach in this training, started out as a way of making my emails more fun to readers and myself.

It’s since become the guiding philosophy of this newsletter, and it’s become a transformative practice that has allowed me to accumulate hundreds of small improvements in the way I write, in the way I create offers, in the way I position myself.

Over time, it’s added up.

If you too have a personal brand online, and if you want to rack up your marketing and persuasion wizard points, slowly but surely, over time, to levels that you cannot even imagine now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Daily Money Vitamin

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A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga once prescribed an “Ad-A-Day Vitamin”:

Every day, no matter what, read a great ad.

Gary said this was a recipe to get 1% better every week.

Which is nice except it doesn’t work. Because reading alone won’t make you better, or cause any kind of a lasting change in you or your life.

(I speak here from personal experience, as a person who has read things in the past, often with great interest.)

Instead, I have something different for you.

Something that creates lasting change, not only in you but in your life, business, and bank account.

It’s the Daily Money Vitamin:

Every day, no matter what, implement one great idea.

Put the idea into action, Apply it. Don’t just read about it, don’t just nod at it, don’t just savor it like a connoisseur.

Instead, think about what the idea is telling you to do, and then do that.

Within a week you will be 1% richer. Within a year, you’ll be 67.8% richer. Within two years, you will be 2.81 times richer. After that, it really begins to compound.

Excellent. Except where do you find great ideas to implement?

Ultimately, great ideas are everywhere. In conversations with people you trust… in old books… in expensive courses… in free email newsletters like this one (ahem, I shared one with you just a few lines above, the Daily Email Vitamin).

If you start keeping track of great ideas like this today, within a year, you’re likely to have hundreds of them.

I myself have been keeping such an archive for years. At last count, it was 937 great ideas long. Here’s a very small sample:

* “To build fascination and rapport, keep asking deeper, more enthusiastic questions” (from James Altucher via his podcast)

* “Use the same link text as the subject line to get clicks” (something Ian Stanley said somewhere)

* “Trialibility is the no. 1 factor affecting adoption of an innovation” (from Jonah Berger’s Catalyst)

I once created a collection of all these great ideas which I called The Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas.

If you want to stock your own library of great ideas, and if you want to taking your Daily Money Vitamin today rather than never, then I’ll make you a deal.

For the next 24 hours, until tomorrow, Tuesday Apr 28 2026, at 8:31pm CET, you can get your little claws on The Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas, for free, if you get my Most Valuable Email program.

For more information on Most Valuable Email before the day runs out:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Public service announcement

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Every few months or so, I like to promote an affiliate offer that doesn’t make me much money, but that I still promote as a kind of chirpy public service announcement.

Today it’s time to do so again.

Because yesterday, in my Daily Email House community, I wrote about an email I sent out recently, which did well for me in terms of sales. That email was based on an idea I got from marketer Travis Sago, who I’ve mentioned often in this newsletter.

After I wrote about that, I got a DM on Skool from a Daily Email House member, who works as a freelance copywriter, and who also has his own email list and a few products he sells to that list.

Here’s that DM interaction:

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FREELANCE COPYWRITER: Hey John, how are you? I keep seeing you mention Travis Sago, and I wonder… how much of an influence does he have on you? It looks like he is the brain behind a lot of campaigns you do and sales

BEJAKO: Yep, I’ve learned a ton from the dude. Highly recommended if you are looking to do more with your email list and audience

FREELANCE COPYWRITER: As somebody who’s pretty fed up with client work and wants the email based business lifestyle, that might make sense. So is his Skool page the only way to see what it’s all about? Or is there a TSL/VSL?

BEJAKO: Pretty much everything he’s doing now is inside that Skool group. He had courses before that you can still buy separately, but they are also inside Skool if you sign up for that

FREELANCE COPYWRITER: Cool. I’ll have a look

===

I figure if this guy is interested, maybe you too will be. I’m not holding my breath though.

I’ve promoted Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin Skool group a dozen times in these emails.

I promoted it before Travis made it available to affiliates, because I was in it, and because I saw it from the inside, and because it made me money.

I promoted it after after Travis set up the affiliate program last year, because I’m still in it, and I can still see it from the inside, and it’s still making me money.

Over the past year that I’ve been promoting Ronin as an affiliate, I have made about $6k in commissions.

That might sound like real money to you, and it is pretty good money for sending a dozen or so emails, but it’s also much much less than I’ve made by promoting much less valuable affiliate offers that I’m much less personally involved with and less enthusiastic about.

It’s also much much less than I’ve made by applying Travis’s teachings inside Ronin. As for that, I can directly trace about $135k in income to Ronin:

* ~35k+ from auctions, following Travis’s “24 Hour FUN Auction” course

* ~60k+ from Daily Email Habit, which I created by following step-by-step Travis’s “Passive Cash Flow Mojo” course, about creating continuity offers

* ~$40k+ from three tiny promos, which were based around ideas I got from Travis’s “$1k a day in 1 Hour a Day” training and his “Big Ticket Email Mojo” course

On top of that, I’ve made much more money indirectly thanks to the ideas and people inside Ronin:

Copy hacks I’ve seen Travis and nobody else use (like the email I mentioned at the start)…

… affiliate offers I’ve promoted from other Ronin members…

… changes I’ve made to the way I create my own offers, which I’ve picked up both from Travis’s trainings and by looking at what he does.

So eat your vegetables.

Brush your teeth.

Don’t smoke.

And sign up to Royalty Ronin, and then start applying the ideas inside, one by one.

I figure that just like other public service announcement, most people will shrug this one off.

But maybe you won’t, at least if you too are fed up with client work and are looking for a way out. If so, I have believed for years and continue to believe this is the best deal on the Internet:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S.. Travis offers a free 7-day trial. If you sign up for Ronin and make it past the first 7 days, write me and let me know. I’ve got some bonuses with your name on them.

[Psych Psundays] Cops and robbers

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For the past couple weeks, I’ve been running a new email series I call Psych Psundays. The first week, the response was good. The second week, it was also good:

#1. “Wow. Thank you, John.”

#2. “Lovely email John – many thanks for writing it – I loved reading it. Great storytelling.”

#3. “These Psych Sundays are helpful.”

#4. “Honestly this came at the right time for me. Just started a new creative strategist role – my first time writing ad scripts – with a new supplement brand. Since this is my first time doing this, I’ve been fighting similar thoughts like “This isn’t right for me, I only know email”… big imposter syndrome stuff. Been taking the next step and fighting those thoughts, leading up to submitting my first ads, was wondering if they’d be ripped to shreds, but the only real feedback I got was “good ads 🔥”… So it’s been a trip.”

This third week, Psych Psundays continues, and threatens to bleed into Pself-Help Psundays instead.

Will this be the end of this series as readers unsubscribe in disgust?

Or will I tell you something interesting and possibly valuable?

Let’s see.

I will start by admitting that last week I rewatched the 2002 Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs. You might know it better in the 2006 remake version by Martin Scorcese, called The Departed.

The movie tells the story of a drug kingpin and a police captain, each of whom plants a mole in the other’s organization.

The cops and criminals keep clashing, pulling away to try to outwit each other, and clashing again.

This coming together and pulling away is precisely what makes the movie tense and fun to watch, all the way to the final showdown, where everybody loses and order is restored to the universe.

Compare that to an article I read a while back about a man named Daniel Kinahan. The article asked a simple question, “An Irish drug dealer, Daniel Kinahan, commands a billion-dollar cocaine empire from the U.A.E. Why isn’t he in prison?”

The background was that Kinahan’s father, Christy, grew up middle class in Dublin, but got into the drug trade. Christy was smart, polite, and careful. Unlike everybody else in the drug business, he was not an addict himself.

Still, in the first few years of his career, back in 1987, Kinahan Sr. got caught and served a few years in prison.

After he got out, Kinahan Sr. made changes to how he was running his drug trafficking business to make it less likely he would get caught.

When his son Daniel took over, there were even more changes introduced, and the risk was reduced even further.

The result is that the Kinahans have been running one of the world’s biggest cocaine organizations, but continue to live free in Dubai, and apparently the police cannot or will not touch them.

Frankly, not much of a story there, and definitely not worth a movie.

A couple weeks ago, back in the inaugural Psych Psunday email, I mentioned I was reading a book called Games People Play. The book is a catalogue of “games” — repeated personal interactions that are played for ulterior motives and payoffs rather than the obvious reasons.

One game described in Games People Play is called “Cops and Robbers.” It’s about real-life cops and robbers, or at least some of them.

The game of “Cops and Robbers” is played for a combination of excitement and security. The excitement comes from being chased. The security comes from being caught and put back to the same place where the robber is used to being, whether that’s the local slum or prison.

But here’s the bit I found interesting. Not every criminal plays “Cops & Robbers.” From Games People Play:

“There seem to be two distinctive types of habitual criminals: those who are in crime primarily for profit, and those who are in it primarily for the game — with a large group in between who can handle it either way. The ‘compulsive winner,’ the big moneymaker whose Child really does not want to be caught, rarely is, according to reports; he is an untouchable, for whom the fix is always in. The ‘compulsive loser,’ on the other hand, who is playing ‘Cops and Robbers,’ seldom does very well financially.”

I found this distinction between “pros” and “C&R players” interesting. It’s the difference between the “Cops & Robbers” players as dramatized in Infernal Affairs, and the Kinahans, the real-life untouchables and compulsive winners, who don’t really make for a good story, but who do live rich and free.

This distinction between “pros” and “players of Cops & Robbers” goes way beyond the criminal world. If you ask me, this same distinction applies pretty much everywhere in life, including the direct response industry.

Publicly, the DR industry all about dramatic transformations and secret push-button solutions that will make you lose weight or turn you into a millionaire in the next 24 hours.

Privately, behind the scenes, the DR industry is built on the Recency-Frequency-Monetary Value formula.

Basically, it’s about selling the same thing, over and over, to people who have been buying for years, people who actually have ulterior motives than making money or losing weight quickly, even though that’s what they they are paying for.

And this is where we veer from Psych Psunday.

Psychology is good at classifying and diagnosing. For how to change, you gotta go to a different section of the bookstore, the self-help section.

For example, I once read a book called Straight-Line Leadership. At its core, it’s about the distinction between “straight-line people” and “circle people.”

It’s the exact same distinction as Games People Play makes, between “pros” and “people who play Cops & Robbers.”

The difference between Straight-Line Leadership and Games People Play is that Straight-Line Leadership tells you that you can become a straight-line person today.

You don’t have to keep quitting or “being caught” once things are going well. You can simply keep going in a straight line, onwards and upwards, like a compulsive winner.

And if you do encounter a setback (eg. you get thrown into jail, like Kinahan Sr.) you can simply come out of jail, make some changes, and get back on the straight line.

A master of direct marketing once wrote:

“One of the greatest lessons I learned about direct marketing over the years is that if it ain’t boring, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re juggling too many balls, running around frantically putting out fires all the time, if every day is a constant uphill battle to succeed… then… something ain’t right. This business, when done correctly, should be dull, boring, slow moving (even at high speed), and mostly automated.”

So there you go. To have a real shot at getting rich and free, get your kicks from somewhere other than your business.

Or don’t. Get your kicks from your business, keep playing Cops and Robbers, experiencing exciting ups and downs.

Many people do it, and there’s no shame in it.

But in that case, you can spare yourself the frustration of wondering why those ups and downs are always there, and realize they’re there because you want them on some level.

And now, a reminder that my Most Valuable Offer launches this coming Wednesday.

With Most Valuable Offer, I’m offering to give you my direct help so you can run a successful launch of a paid live workshop by the end of April, which you can then keep selling, in an automated way, until the stars fall from the sky.

For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/mvo

What’s up with my hiring

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Last week I wrote an email saying that I’m hiring an assistant. I got a buncha replies to that, some encouraging, others frustrating.

I wrote back to everyone to say I’m working my way through the replies, and that I will be in touch if I think there’s a possible fit there.

I’ve had a few people proactively follow up with me since. “Do you have an update regarding my application?”

The update is that on Friday I hired somebody. I’m also interviewing a second person to hire on Monday. I figure, now that I’ve decided on hiring, why not go big?

The guy I hired yesterday, marketer and computer programmer GC Tsalamagkakis, is somebody I’ve known for a good while.

He has been active in my Daily Email House community for over a year. He was one of the top bidders in my “I endorse YOU” auction. We’ve talked on multiple occasions previously. I know he’s worked with and gotten results for other people I know and respect.

GC wrote me flat out saying that he’s not applying to be my assistant, but that maybe he can help me automate some of the stuff I’m doing or want to do?

We talked and defined an easy test project.

GC wanted to do it for free.

I told him I appreciate the sentiment but I insist on paying him, both for his sake and for mine.

He quoted me a price.

I thought it was too low. So I decided to pay him 4x what he had asked me.

Do you think that makes me a good guy? Or a creep who’s trying to virtue signal by writing about it here?

You can think what you like, but I can tell you I’m neither very good nor am I trying to signal whatever goodness I have here.

This is simply me working myself mentally into this hiring game.

A couple days ago, I mentioned a discussion I’d listened to between Frank Kern and Dean Jackson, about sticking to what you’re irreplaceable at, and hiring out for everything else. Said Frank:

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There’s three ways to get rich. You can invent something. You can inherit something. Or you could invest. And I think all business people are ultimately investors.

That’s all we do. So if you think about that, and you think about the hiring of a “who,” it’s not an expense, but a means to multiply capital.

I pay my “who” that does the automation stuff close to 300 grand a year.

And people are like, “My God, you could get it so much cheaper.”

And I say, “Well I might-could, but assuming I’m getting about a 20% annual return on my investment in a ‘who,’ would I rather get 20% of 50 grand, or 300?”

===

That 20% return is pretty much how the math will work out for the test task that GC did for me.

He’s automated some stuff for me that was previously spread out across a couple software subscriptions.

As a result, I will be able to shut those subscriptions down, and save enough over the coming year to make back what I paid GC, and make about a 20% return on top of that.

There is a bigger point here, and it applies to you also. I’ve heard it stated in different ways:

“Turn costs into a profit center.”

“Find a way to make it work for you.”

Or, like Frank Kern says above, “Think of it like an investment.”

This applies if you’re hiring, yes. But it also applies if you’re buying courses, paying for subscriptions, running ads, or simply spending your money and time. All these could simply be costs. Or, with a change of perspective and bit of determination, they could be opportunities to multiply capital. It’s your call.

Curiosity considered harmful

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“The cure to boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

— Dorothy Parker

I came across this quote on January 29, in a bout of idle clicking online.

I took note of it and wrote it down.

The article I was reading used this quote to make it sound like perpetual curiosity is a good thing.

But if you’ve spent any time in Internet Marketing land, where I live online, you know that perpetual curiosity can be harmful.

It’s Saturday morning as I write this. I’ve been awake for only a few hours but so far my media and content consumption has consisted of:

– A few paragraphs of an article on quantum physics (“mysteries finally resolved?”)

– A few minutes of a training by marketer Travis Sago (I was chuffed to hear my name mentioned right in the first few minutes)

– An excerpt of a tennis podcast hosted by former world no. 1 Andy Roddick (“Is Alcaraz the second coming of Roger Federer?”)

– Several articles on St. Valentine and the history of Valentine’s Day (a Roman holiday, rebranded)

– A summary of the book Million Dollar Consulting by Adam Weiss (“sell outcomes not deliverables”)

– Several visits to my Daily Email House community, to see what people have guessed so far in response to a marketing riddle I’ve posted (nobody’s got it yet)

– A half dozen trips to my email inbox, because, you know, maybe somebody’s written me something important? (no)

Point being, I am what you might generously call a curious person, and what you might less generously call a distractible and scatterbrained layabout.

I realized a long time ago that I would starve to death and die alone, by the side of the road, if I just kept following my curiosity wherever it led me.

I also realized a long time ago that people who end up successful in direct marketing are, like me, all opportunity seekers at heart, who have somehow figured out a way to survive in spite of their perpetual opportunity seeking.

Because while there is no cure for curiosity, there is a palliative, and it’s to do something with what you found out, to put it to use.

I wasted much of this morning in idle clicking around and reading stuff that interested me for the moment.

That’s how I spend much of my day, every day, even now, that I am reasonably successful and productive.

I’ve been able to afford myself this luxury because I pay the piper every day, and I do something with at least a tiny portion of all the information I’ve been exposed to.

Specifically, I write a daily email.

Writing a daily email has kept me from starving to death, alone, by the side of the road.

It’s even allowed me to live a comfortable and interesting life.

Interesting both because I’ve been allowed to keep idly following almost every fascinating story and sales page and link that draws my attention…

… and because actually implementing a bit of what I’ve learned, every day, has opened up incredible opportunities and hidden doors, which I never would have known about had I simply stayed in pure curiosity-land.

Writing every day is a great way to do something with all the info you’re seeking out every day.

If you’re not yet writing daily, I highly recommend it.

And if you want my help in putting some structure around your own perpetual curiosity, and getting an email out every day, consistently, in reasonable time, so you quickly can get back to clicking and reading and being fascinated, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh