Getting Rich

Famous showman advises you to stop bla— well, let me stop myself there

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Back in the 19th century, famous ringmaster P.T. Barnum made good money going around the country and giving a talk titled, The Art of Money-Getting.

Barnum knew a thing or two about money-getting.

​​He built up a large fortune, worth several hundred million dollars today, starting from nothing, using nothing except his own wits. And he did it a few times over, including after being forced into bankruptcy by cheating business partners and disastrous Acts of God.

Anyways, here’s a bit from Barnum’s Art of Money-Getting:

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Don’t blab. Some men have a foolish habit of telling their business secrets. If they make money they like to tell their neighbors how it was done. Nothing is gained by this, and ofttimes much is lost. Say nothing about your profits, your hopes, your expectations, your intentions.

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Not long ago, I asked readers of this newsletter which of my emails came to mind first.

I got lots of responses, and also some surprising extra information.

Many people used the word “transparent.” They said they liked my emails because of how transparent I am.

​​I guess they meant transparent about my business, because I don’t make any effort to be transparent about my personal stuff. Rather, I sometimes make an effort to be opaque about that.

So maybe Barnum speaking to me. Stop being so transparent, Bejako.

Or maybe he was speaking to you.

Don’t blab, dear reader. And if you do decide to share your money-getting business secrets, make sure something fine is gained by it, and not just a back-slap from your neighbors.

At this point in my email newsletter, I had a special offer for my readers. That’s not an offer I ever make on this website, in the archived version of my email — because I don’t like to blab about it publicly. In case you would like to get on my email newsletter, to get the full story I am writing each day, you can click here and sign up.

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.

Touch 1458

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Yesterday, while vegetating in the changing room at my gym, I came across a provocative post written by a Morgan Housel.

That name sounded familiar. It turned out I’d seen it high up on the Amazon bestseller lists.

Housel is the author of The Psychology of Money — an ugly title, but one which has sold over 2 million copies and been translated into 52 languages.

Not only that. Housel is also a partner in some venture fund called Collaborative. I guess that might mean absolutely nothing, but it might also mean he’s very, very rich.

Anyways, Housel’s post was titled, Ideas That Changed My Life. “You spend years trying to learn new stuff,” says Housel, “but then look back and realize that maybe like 10 big ideas truly changed how you think and drive most of what you believe.”

So what are Housel’s big ideas?

I’ll share just one. Housel believes the only path to long-term success, besides luck, is sustainable competitive advantage. And get this — Housel also believes there are only 5 sources of such competitive advantage:

1. Learn faster than your competition

2. Empathize with customers more than your competition

3. Communicate more effectively than your competition

4. Be willing to fail more than your competition

5. Wait longer than your competition

And now, if you like, I’ll tell you about a single way, and a rather simple way, to tap into all five sources of sustainable competitive advantage in one go.

I can tell you about it from personal experience. Because I believe I’ve tapped into all five sources of competitive advantage by writing these daily emails.

​​Maybe it’s obvious how, maybe it’s not.

​​Check it:

1. Learn faster than your competition. I know what I will write in my email today, but I’m not sure about tomorrow. And so I’m constantly on the hunt for valuable and new ideas to share.

When I write about those ideas, I get a clearer understanding, or realize my total lack of understanding. Plus I remember them better. Some of these ideas I even apply in my own email marketing, and grok them on a completely different and much more real level than simply “knowing” about them.

2. Empathize with customers more than your competition. I never made much effort to share intrusive personal detail about myself in these emails. I find it unpleasant to do so more than once in a mercury retrograde. But inevitably, over four years of daily writing, many personal stories came out.

Pop quiz: How did my ex-girlfriend react when I gave her an expensive gold bracelet on our one-year anniversary? Hint: It wasn’t pretty.

I wrote an email about that a year and a half ago. When I recently asked people which of my emails first comes to mind, these kinds of personal reveals were near the top. And yes, this is how empathy works on the Internet.

3. Communicate more effectively than your competition. Yes.

4. Be willing to fail more than your competition. Uff. So many stupid things I’ve written. So many offers I’ve made that have gone nowhere. So many experiments that blew up in my face. Nobody remembers. Even I struggle to dredge them up, and I’ve got a keen instinct for shame.

5. Wait longer than your competition. Conventional wisdom says it takes 7 “touches” to make a sale. But how about 775?

Two weeks ago, on December 3, during my last bout of promoting my Most Valuable Email, one of the people who bought has been on my list since October 19 2020. That’s 775 days. He never bought anything from me before, though he replied to my emails on occasion.

Imagine poor Frank Bettger a hundred years ago, trudging around Chicago in his galoshes while the wind and snow whipped is face, visiting cigar-smoking business owners and trying to sell them life insurance. Back then, doing 775 “touches” was not feasible.

Today, thanks to the Internet and email, it’s quite feasible. In fact, it’s easy and even fun.

I’m not telling you to follow what I did, or even to do what I’m doing now. My path to 1458 “touches” — my best estimate — has been unique. And even today, I do things that might be suboptimal, but that allow me to stick with daily emailing for the long term.

My point is simply that if you’re not writing regular emails, start doing so. It can give you lasting competitive advantages like few other things can.

And if you want my personal help and guidance with that, well, I’m not sure you can get it.

As I announced three days ago, I’m launching a coaching program, which will start in January, specifically about email.

Quite a few people have expressed interest so far. But I’ve turned most of them away. They simply had too few of the necessary pieces already in place.

I will be promoting this coaching program for another three days after today.

If you can see the possible value to your business of sending regular emails — and doing so for the long term — then the first step is to get on my email list. Click here to do so. That done, we can check whether you have enough in place already for me to quickly guide you to email-based competitive advantage.

The price took my breath away

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Back in 2019, I had been talking to Dan Ferrari about joining his coaching program. Dan and I exchanged some emails. We got on the phone to talk — I asked him a dozen questions I had prepared in advance, and he patiently answered.

At the end of the call, I told Dan I’m in. Even though we still hadn’t talked price.

Dan then sent me an email with a PayPal link, and the actual per-month cost of his coaching.

I still remember exactly where I was in the city when I took out my phone and saw Dan’s email. Like I said, the price took my breath away.

I expected the coaching to be expensive. But not this expensive. I won’t say exactly how expensive it turned out to be. I’ll just say it was as high as my total income on many months at the time.

Still, I had some savings. I figured as long as I had some money in the bank, I was willing to give it a go. So I took a deep breath, PayPaled Dan the money, and the coaching started.

Months passed. Dan delivered on his end. He gave me feedback on my copy. He made introductions to potential high-level clients. He showed me some A-list secrets.

And yet, it wasn’t paying off. I was burning through my savings. And I still wasn’t making that filthy lucre that I was hoping for.

Six months into the coaching, I told Dan that I didn’t want to keep going. I felt I didn’t have enough high-level copy projects for him to critique. I didn’t have any promising new leads who might change that. And I was getting very nervous because my savings had all but evaporated.

So I quit.

And then, the very next month, I had my biggest-ever month as a copywriter. I made about double what I had made on my best month to that point.

The month after that even bigger.

The month after that, bigger still.

And it kept going.

In just the first two months after I quit Dan’s coaching, the extra money I made paid for all the coaching I had gotten from Dan.

Over the next year or so, I made more money than I had made in the previous five years total.

My work and and skill and dedication where an undeniable part of that jump in income. But so were a few things I can directly trace to Dan and his coaching program.

I’d like to tell you the biggest one of those. It was a throwaway piece of advice I got from Dan around month four in the coaching program. But today’s email is getting long, so I will tell you that tomorrow, in case you are interested.

For now, let me restate my offer from yesterday:

I’m starting up a coaching program, focused specifically on email marketing.

You might think I told you the above story to encourage you to jump in, price be damned, because it will end up paying for itself somehow.

That’s not it at all.

Yes, my goal is for this coaching program to pay for itself for the right person.

But I am not nearly as willing to gamble with other people’s money as I am with my own. And since this is the first time I am offering coaching like this, I want to kick it off on a positive note, with people who have the best chance to make this coaching pay for itself, and soon, rather than in seven or eight months.

If you think that might be you, then my first requirement is that you join my email newsletter. Click here and sign up. That done, we can talk.

Looks like I’ve won a $1,000 copywriting gig!

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About two months ago, I found out about an exciting copywriting gig:

An online publication was looking for content writers. The pay was $250 per article of about 750 words. Articles could come in a thematic series of 4.

I came up with an idea for a 4-part series, wrote up a nice little proposal, and sent it off to the editor of the publication.

And then, as nothing seemed to be happening, I forgot all about it.

Fast forward to two weeks ago:

The editor wrote back to me to say my idea sounds wonderful. And if I can get her the first drafts by December 16, my articles could be published as soon as January. And once my articles are published, inshallah, I will get paid $1k!

There once was a time, not even so many years ago, when I would have gladly taken on this kind of work without any ulterior motive.

But today, it takes a little something extra to get me excited.

So here’s the something extra:

This online publication is The Professional Writers’ Alliance. From what I understand, PWA is a paid community of freelance copywriters, somewhere under the umbrella of AWAI.

Are you getting a glimpse of my devious scheme?

I write some interesting and valuable content for PWA, and include a byline and a link to my site…

Some freelance copywriter out there reads my content and decides to get on my email list to read more…

I send him a few more well meaning emails and then—

BAM! I sell him one of my offers that might be interesting to freelance copywriters.

All right, writing guest content as a means of self-promotion is probably not new to you. What might be new to you is the following suggestion:

Look for ways to get paid for your self-promotion.

Of course, it’s not always possible, but it is more possible than you might at first think.

For example, did you know it’s possible to get paid to send out your sales letters to your audience, either online or by mail?

In other words, rather than having to pay either the USPS to deliver your stuffed-and-enveloped sales letter… or having to pay Facebook to get eyeballs that will look at your sales page… you can actually get paid each time a high-quality prospect reads your sales pitch?

It’s true, and it’s actually what I will be writing about for the PWA in January.

If you’ve been reading my emails for a while, you probably know this get-paid-to-advertise trick. And if not, I might write more about it in the coming weeks.

To get on my email list so you can read that (beware, I might try to sell you something), click here and fill out the form that appears.

I’m not worried about my email from last night — really

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My email last night about James Altucher drew a surprising number of thoughtful and emotional responses…

#1 “If that’s what got James Altucher to stop, that’s really sad. I too enjoyed his writing.”

#2 “Great email. I always enjoyed James Altucher’s writing, too. It’s so quirky and off-beat.”

#3 “So… your email couldn’t have had better timing.”

#4 “I appreciate you sharing the email you never sent and hope he finds his confidence again someday.”

… but what my email yesterday did not do is get any sales. And in fact, it also didn’t get almost any clicks to the sales page – not compared to what I’m used to seeing.

To which, all which I can do is give a Gandhi-like smile, shrug gently, and then hiss through clenched teeth:

“Come on people, don’t you realize I’m trying to run a little business here? Buy something or move on.”

But a little more seriously, such is the world of not-really direct response marketing in daily emails.

Last night’s email drew a lot of engagement, but seems to have been worthless for business. But maybe not.

I’ve sent similar emails to this list that made me multiple thousands of dollars. In fact, I might collect all such emails into a course one day, which I will call:

“Multiple-Thousand-$$$ Emails I Sent Right Before A Deadline — And You Can Too”

The truth is, if you have a daily email list, and you’re not just spamming people with random affiliate offers, then it’s often the cumulative effect that makes people buy.

And even when people are mostly “sold” by a single email, it’s often not the email from which they clicked through to the sales page.

So the way I see it, it doesn’t make too much sense to stress over an email that seems to have been worthless for business.

Likewise, it doesn’t make too much sense to celebrate the emails that did make sales (except my “Multiple-Thousand-$$$ Emails I Sent Right Before A Deadline” — more info on that exciting course coming up soon).

So what does make sense?

I can only tell you the four things I do:

1. Keep an eye on sales over a longer time – like a month. Things tend to average out over a month, and hidden effects become less hidden.

2. Do worry if the total sales over that longer period are not going up. (If the total sales are going up, then still worry, but less.)

3. Do make new offers — again, keep your eyes peeled for my “Multiple-Thousand-$$$ Emails I Sent Right Before A Deadline — And You Can Too”

4. Follow Gary Bencivenga’s advice about getting 1% better each day. Except 1% better each day seems like a lot to me. So I aim for more like 1% better each week.

Which brings me to my offer:

It’s not new. And it’s certainly not the only way to get 1% better each week. But maybe it will be the difference that allows you to get better, regularly. Sign up for my email newsletter, and get more emails like this, every day.

The three sweetest sales I made in November

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A few moments before I stood up to write this email, I shut down the cart and disabled the sales page for the Age of Insight live training.

It’s the first time I’m offering a training on the topic of insight, which has been squatting like a demon in my head for the past several years. Now it’s time for people who signed up for Age of Insight to see how I deliver on my promises of:

1. Influencing people without resistance

2. Triggering hope and enthusiasm, which translate into sales

3. Having your ideas and your name spread far and wide by excited audience members and grateful customers

Like I said, I’ve been thinking about insight for years. I’ve been preparing for this presentation for the past month. I’ve been promoting it actively every day for the past two weeks.

And now that the training is live, I will have several all-evening calls to deliver, plus a couple bonus trainings to think up and give, plus a year-long book club to run.

I managed to get the exact number of people to sign up for Age of Insight that I was hoping for. Which is nice.

But as I tried to show you above, it’s taken me quite a bit of work to get here, and it will take quite a bit more work to pay it off.

If I had to describe the flavor of successfully promoting and now delivering Age of Insight, I would have to say it’s a complex and umami-heavy broth.

Compare that to the three sweetest sales I made over the past thirty days.

All were for my Most Valuable Email program.

Three sales might not sound like a lot. And $300, which is what I made in total from these three sales, won’t buy me a fur coat just yet.

On the other hand, all three of these sales came without absolutely any effort on my part, either in promoting or in delivering this program. I haven’t promoted it for over 6 weeks, and the delivery is all automated.

Plus, there’s a bit of sugar on top:

When people go through MVE, they become very likely to buy more trainings from me. So maybe one of these three $100 purchases will turn into a few hundred dollars more down the line.

If that happens, and if you then ask me to describe it as a flavor, I’ll probably have to say it tastes like a raspberry cheesecake.

Anyways, I won’t try to get you to visit my Age of Insight sales page here. All I want to do is to offer you a chance to sign up for my daily emails, where you can see my Most Valuable Email trick in practice, once a week or so. If you are curious, click here to sign up for my daily emails.

Announcing: My new 183-day challenge

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I woke up this morning to an email inviting me to promote a “6-figure challenge” challenge.

From what I understand, the challenge is for an audience of experts to build their own 6-figure challenge funnel.

I have never participated in an online challenge. I do not ever plan on participating in an online challenge. And so, simply as a matter of only promoting dogfood that my own dog has happily eaten in the past, I won’t be promoting this offer.

But this did bring to mind another challenge I read about just last night. You might want to take a deep breath — because it’s the challenge of voluntary poverty. Bear with me for a moment while I tell you about it.

I read about this challenge in a book by “the father of American psychology,” William James. A hundred years ago, James had this to say:

Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.

Maybe this sounds to you like another classic self-defeating Bejako gambit, promoting the challenge of voluntary poverty to an audience of copywriters, marketers, and business owners. But hold on. James goes on to explain:

It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases.

Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.

What James is saying is that in many cases — maybe in most cases — there is a tradeoff between the desire for wealth and the desire for freedom and independence.

​​And freedom and independence — that’s something I bet you care about.

I’m going by my own feelings here. I’ve always cared more about freedom than money. And in fact, I originally got interested in copywriting not because of the promise of sales letters that would pay me millions of dollars in royalties. I got interested because copywriting meant I wouldn’t have to keep sitting in somebody else’s office, day after day, from dark in the morning until dark in the afternoon.

There’s a fair chance you’re like me, and that you also care about being free and independent.

And so, starting today, I would like to announce my 183-day Voluntary Poverty Challenge. ​​For the low, low price of $5,000, you can join my challenge and have my team of certified poverty coaches reorganize your life along lines recommended by William Jam—

Yeah right. My point is simply that there are often tradeoffs among our most fundamental motivating forces. ​​And also, that it’s possible to sell even something hard and mean — voluntary poverty — by appealing to deeper psychological drivers like the desire for freedom.

But really, I have a 183-day challenge for you. Join my email newsletter, and look out for my email each day, waiting for the day when I will fail and not write anything. It hasn’t happened for the past several thousand days, but maybe it will happen in the next 183 days. And then you can gloat. If you’d like to join this exciting challenge, click here to get started.

Money don’t love Spruce Goose

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On a beautiful day exactly 75 years ago, Howard Hughes smiled for the camera, hung up the in-cockpit telephone, and took hold of the controls.

He was piloting the largest “flying boat” ever built.

I’m talking about the Hughes H-4 Hercules, aka the Spruce Goose.

In spite of the nickname, The Goose was mostly birch.

That didn’t stop it from being enormously expensive for the time. And with good reason. As Hughes put it:

“It is over five stories tall with a wingspan longer than a football field. That’s more than a city block. Now, I put the sweat of my life into this thing. I have my reputation all rolled up in it and I have stated several times that if it’s a failure, I’ll probably leave this country and never come back. And I mean it.”

Well, I guess Hughes didn’t mean it all that seriously. Because he didn’t leave the country, even though, by all practical measures, the Goose turned out to be a colossal failure.

After all, once Hughes lifted The Goose above the sparkling waters off Long Beach, CA, it flew for less than a minute, for less than a mile.

That was its one and only flight.

And even this one lousy flight came well after the end of World War II, even though The Goose was designed to be a war transport plane, and even though the whole point of building The Goose out of spruce (or birch) was the wartime restriction on materials such as aluminum.

So yeah, the Spruce Goose remains the best illustration of a massive, drawn-out, and ultimately useless project.

The point being, don’t be like this. Don’t roll “the sweat of your life”, your name and reputation, and possibly your country of residence into one drawn-out project which won’t get a chance for even a test flight until years from now.

Because money don’t love Spruce Goose.

Money loves speed.

I’ve tried to track down who coined that saying, but I don’t have a definitive answer. I’ve heard Dan Kennedy say it often. Joe Vitale has got a book by that title. But I bet it goes back a century or more, in some slightly different phrasing, with the same basic idea. Maybe you can enlighten me.

Anyways, let me take my own advice, and wrap up this post:

My email newsletter is now available for you to join. In case you’d like a chance to get copywriting, marketing, and persuasion ideas into your head — so you can start getting that money that speed promises — here’s where to go.

My ship is sunk

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Yesterday, I invited you to play a little game called Daily Email Battleship.

It was supposed to be a fun way to exchange recommendations for daily email newsletters.

What I didn’t realize is I was getting myself into an unfair fight.

After all, there is only one of me. And my opponents were many.

So last night, after my email went out, alarm sirens started blaring on the HMS Bejako. My sonar system, warning me of incoming torpedos, started beeping faster and faster.

A muffled explosion went off underneath my inbox, and then a second, and then a third.

I looked out towards the horizon. It was dark with opposing battleships. I readied myself for a desperate fight.

But in spite of my valiant defenses and best evasive maneuvers, in the end my flotilla was torpedoed, overwhelmed, and finally sunk by the sheer onslaught of daily email recommendations from readers.

I’m being a tad dramatic.

If you joined me for Daily Email Battleship yesterday, thanks for playing. I will get back to you in person as soon as I get from under water a little.

And I will also be checking out the many interesting recommendations I got. I will share any standouts with you in the coming days and weeks.

Still, I gotta admit I was surprised.

Because in spite of getting something like 80+ different newsletter recommendations, there were plenty of successful people and businesses, sending out interesting daily emails, which were not named by anybody who played Daily Email Battleship with me.

Some of these were email lists I have mentioned in this very newsletter.

Others are one-man bands which have been featured as testimonials in big guru emails.

Perhaps the fact that nobody mentioned any of these newsletters is chance or omission.

But more likely, it’s just an inspiring reminder about the modern world.

Most people — myself included, and perhaps you too — can’t really fathom how many human beings there are on the planet right now.

And the fact is, you can have a business today, and do very, very well, with a tiny audience of just a few thousand people, or even fewer.

A few thousand people is like an eye dropper’s worth of humans in the great ocean of humanity.

But if you can somehow collect that eye dropper’s worth of people… and if you can create something of value and interest for them… and then sell it to them, in a way that’s enjoyable enough that they even look forward your selling, day after day… then you can do very well, while staying under the radar and above the sonar of almost everybody out there.

So that’s my possibly inspiring reminder.

Here’s another:

I have an email newsletter. And if you’d like to learn some hard-won email marketing lessons I learned on board the HMS Bejako, and while serving as a sailor in various other business’s marketing navies, you can sign up for my newsletter here.