Getting Rich

The most powerful and trite-sounding idea I’ve accepted over the past year

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A few days ago, I was out for a morning walk when I saw a dad and his eight-year-old son walking towards me. I got to hear a bit of their conversation:

“Dad, did you like going to school?”

“It wasn’t bad. My friends where there.”

“It’s not bad for me either. But I still don’t like it.”

They dropped out of hearing range. But I thought to myself, “Smart kid.”

Maybe I just thought that because I also didn’t like school, even when my friends were there. In fact, I would say I hated school.

I hated being told what to do. I hated the arbitrary stuff I had to do. I hated being forced to sit there all day long. It was like working in an office, but I wasn’t getting paid.

Fortunately I’ve been out of school for a while now. And now I do get paid for the work I do, plus I even enjoy it.

I’m not exactly sure how I got here. But I do know that at some point, I sat down and made a list of things I enjoyed doing up to that point… and another list of things I didn’t enjoy, or even hated.

I came back to both lists occasionally. And over time, without trying hard, I experienced more of the things on the first list. And over time, again without trying hard, I somehow eliminated all the things on the second list.

There’s a bigger point in there.

The most powerful ideas I’ve internalized over the past year is also one of the most trite-sounding. I heard it for years, and each time I just rolled my eyes. The idea is simply this:

Bring your attention to what you want.

Over the past year, I realized this isn’t some “law of attraction” fluff. Rather, it’s practical advice.

Get things out of your head. Write down what you want, to the best of your knowledge. Also write down what you want to stay away from. And then come back to those lists regularly.

Making and reviewing those lists might be all you have to do to stick it out for the long term and enjoy the process.

Because in my experience, success comes from figuring out how to play the long game. Even if that means eliminating things that everyone says are important and good — like school.

Ok, on to business:

You might be wondering what this work is that I do. It’s mainly writing, specifically, copywriting. Like I said, I enjoy it, and I find it pays very well. If it’s something you’re interested in learning more about, sign up for my daily email newsletter, where I write more about copywriting, and occasional “law of attraction” fluff.

Breaking the code of the highly successful person

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The sun is shining, I have an egg sandwich and a bottle of water for the road, and I’m ready to get in the car and drive across three countries in about as many hours.

But before I can do that, I have to finish this email and two more things. And that’s my point for you for today.

I recently read Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs.

​​I long resisted doing so because the very words “time management” sound repulsive to me, a throwback to the time of Fred Flintstone slaving away at the rock quarry until the foreman yanks the pterodactyl’s tail to signal the end of the work day.

But boy was I wrong.

Dan Kennedy’s book is fantastic. I recommend it to anyone who is a driven go-getter (it will help you focus and get more done) or, like me, a lazy layabout by nature (it will still help you focus and get more done).

Anyways, towards the end of the book, Dan quotes a bit of wisdom he heard in his young days from success speaker Jim Rohn.

Dan says that, for him, this bit of wisdom broke the code of the highly successful person. It took all the mystery and mystique away. And here it is:

When you look closely at highly successful people in any field, you walk away saying to yourself, “Well it’s no wonder he’s doing so well. Look at everything he does.”

That’s what Jim Rohn used to say. To which, Dan Kennedy adds, “… and look very closely at the one thing or two or three things he gets done without fail, every single day.”

So there you go. My point for you for today. Figure out one or two or three things you will get done each day, without fail.

Perhaps you’re curious what my “without fail” things are.

Like I said, this email is one. Another, which i started only recently, is working on a new offer. And the third, which I’ve been practicing for most of my life, is reading. Because reading is really the fuel that drives any achievements I’ve had.

I’m not telling you to pick up these specific daily habits. Make your own choices.

​​But if reading is something you want to do every day, both for your sanity and for your success, then, again, I can recommend Dan Kenendy’s Time Management book. It’s a smart investment right now, because it will pay so much in time dividends tomorrow.

In case you want to check it out, you can find the Amazon link below:
​
https://bejakovic.com/time-management​​

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?

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Are you ready to be outraged or maybe alarmed?

Then let me tell you about the research of one Alessandro Pluchino. He’s a mathematician at the University of Catania.

Pluchino’s research was just reported in MIT Technology Review. The article is titled, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”

It turns out it’s all about luck. Rich people aren’t any more talented or hard-working.

We know this because Pluchino created a computer simulation. His simulation recreated the real-world distribution of wealth. And within this simulation, it’s chance that makes people rich.

Little-known fact:

I spent a good number of years in academe. One reason I left was I didn’t like the taste of cooked science like the above.

The recipe is simple.

Start with a culturally and politically attractive premise. For example, “wealth is undeserved.” And then find a technical argument to back that premise up.

And then a bit later, say in 2022, send out your sack-carrying bureaucrats to people’s doors to confiscate any extra grain or crypto profits that accumulated over the past 12 months.

If anybody even thinks to complain, have your bureaucrats pull out the science paper and start waving it around.

Make people feel guilty, small-minded, and ignorant for not doing what the state asks. After all, nobody really deserved that surplus in the first place — the science tells us so.

I’d like to give you another explanation of why you’re not rich, even if you’re so smart.

It’s based on uncooked science. It has nothing to do with luck. And it’s more empowering than Pluchino’s conclusion above.

Here’s the upshot:

You’re not rich because you’re not focused on money.

Maybe you’re focused on building up your skills or services, and waiting to become so good they can’t ignore you.

Maybe you’re focused on doing what you’re told — the next diploma, the next promotion, the next opportune moment.

Or maybe you’re focused on entirely other things — like playing badminton or reading books about religion.

Whatever the case, you’re not rich because your focus wanders elsewhere. Bring your focus to money, and watch it start to multiply.

How do we know this?

Like I said, science. Specifically, a crossover study of one. One person’s controlled scientific experiment of many years of not focusing on money… and not making much of it, except from occasional windfalls…

Followed by a few months of focusing on money and… well, I’ll tell you more in the coming weeks and months how that’s been working out for me.

Meanwhile, if you want to get rich — not today, not tomorrow, but maybe some time soon — then start focusing. And start keeping an eye out for those sack-carrying bureaucrats.

The inspiration theory of money

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Yesterday, I was walking through town and I saw a small group of dressed-up people. They were standing outside the local council hall. It was a wedding, about to go down.

The bride-to-be was sitting by the door and taking deep breaths. She was getting ready to stand up and walk into the building.

All around her and around the small group, down the stairs and across the small piazza in front, there was a scattered mass of pink flower petals.

And then in the corner of the piazza, there was a cleaning woman. She had a broom in hand. And she was already busy, sweeping up the flower petals and throwing them away into a trash bag.

For many years now, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of what money really is.

I’ve read a bit about it, but I’ve never found a satisfactory answer. I think a part of that is that money is in fact several different things, all rolled into one.

So let me tell you a bit of what I’ve concluded about money, and why this can matter if you are looking to make more money.

One obvious thing:

Money is a measure of what different people value, right there in a specific moment. So for example, take the wedding scene.

I’m sure the wedding party paid good money for those flower petals. The petals had value to that group of people. Right up to the moment that the future bride sat down before going in for the actual wedding.

But in that very moment, things shifted. The value of the flower petals to the wedding party disappeared.

Instead, there was sudden value to all the other citizens of this small town in getting rid of the flower petals. Which is why the cleaning woman was getting paid to sweep them up.

Maybe it seems like I am flogging a dead flower here. But there is a non-obvious point to all this:

Many of us, myself included, think of money as some kind of stored resource, like flower petals in a bag, or maybe grain in a silo. You have a good harvest… store some of your grain away… and you will have something to eat when winter comes.

And by extension:

If I take some of your money away from you, I will have more to eat this winter, and you will have less.

But money might be less like grain in a silo than like applause after a rousing speech… or the joy of having flowers thrown over you as you walk in for your wedding.

In this theory, money is a reflection of temporary desire, and of the ability to inspire, move, and influence. It’s a measure of what some of us value right now, and that waxes and wanes from moment to moment.

Of course, there is more to money than this. Which is why money might seem confusing to you, like it does to me.

Maybe I will write more about that another time. If you want to read that should it appear, you can sign up here.

But for now, I’d like to suggest that money is not a zero-sum game. And perhaps, if you are looking to make more money, keeping this in mind will help you inspire, move, and persuade other people… for just a few moments… in ways that benefit you both.

Hypno-wizards and their willing victims

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Imagine a small, dark cell. There’s a light bulb swinging overhead. One man is seated at a table under the light bulb. Two men are standing over the seated man, and a few more sit in the shadows along the wall, watching the proceedings.

“Who else was involved in planning the robbery?” asks one of the standing men.

“It was me…” stammers the man at the table. “Well, we had talked about it the night before…”

The other standing man leans in. “Who is this ‘we’?”

The seated man looks up into the light and blinks over and over. “It was just me. Bjørn… I…”

“Bjørn was also involved in planning the robbery?”

Suddenly, one of the men sitting in the shadows coughs. He makes a show of crossing his legs in an unusual way. The parts of his legs beneath the knee form a clear letter X.

The man under the light bulb straightens up. “Nobody else was involved. I acted alone. My goal was to support the revolution.”

In 1951, a man named Palle Hardrup robbed a bank in Copenhagen. The robbery wasn’t his first, but it was the first one that went bad, and Hardrup killed two people. Soon after, he was arrested and interrogated.

During the interrogations, it became clear Hardrup might have been acting under the direction of somebody else.

That somebody else turned out to be Bjørn Nielsen, a self-taught hypnotist.

Over the next 10 years, the story slowly unfolded across Danish courthouses, prisons, and hospitals. Eventually, it even made it to the European Court of Human Rights.

The question was who was responsible for the robbery and the murders. Hardrup, who had confessed to the the crimes… Nielsen, who dozens of witnesses claimed had hypnotized Hardrup over the course of two years, and who still seemed to have total control over his hypno-puppet, each time the symbol X appeared in some way… or Hardrup and Nielsen both.

What do you think? I’ll tell you what Dan Kennedy thinks:

Dan thinks if you want to get rich, then be the wizard… and beware other wizards.

What Dan is saying is we all crave to give up responsibility in our lives. It’s a dangerous thing to allow yourself to do… but there is lots of money to be made in providing that service to other people.

And that’s what I think those Copenhagen hypnosis murders illustrate.

Human beings are extremely programmable.

We also have individual agency.

And if you ask me, those are two magnetic poles that cannot be reduced down to one.

This is something you might want to keep in mind… if you too have decided to get rich, the way I’ve finally done recently, for the first time in my life.

And in case you want to get educated about persuasion, marketing, and copywriting to help you in your quest to get rich… you might like my daily email newsletter.

Last chance to send $1000, plus a free spot in my upcoming Write-Your-Advertorial workshop

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On April 30, 1961, Leonid Rogozov gave himself a jab of Novocaine. He struggled forward in his hospital bed and told one of his “assistants” to shift the mirror a little. He picked up the scalpel, and started cutting into his own side.

It took Rogozov about an hour or so. He had to take frequent breaks due to weakness and fainting spells.

But eventually, he managed to cut out his own inflamed appendix… sew himself up… and presumably, drink a bunch of vodka to celebrate.

Leonid Rogozov was the only doctor at the Soviet Antarctic station. He had to operate on himself, because nobody else at the station could. He survived, and a year later, when he got off Antarctica and his story became known, he became a national hero.

I’d like you to keep in mind this image of a doctor operating on himself… while I tell you about something I heard in Dan Kennedy’s Wealth Attraction Seminar.

“Don’t make decisions for other people,” says Dan.

The fact is, we are all full of what Dan calls secular religious beliefs. These are “facts” about our businesses we firmly believe without any proof. Things like, how much people in our market are willing to spend… what they are willing to buy… and how best to sell them.

Dan says those secular religious beliefs reflect more what’s going on internally in our (the marketers’) heads… rather than the true state of the market.

Dangerous stuff. You might even call it a poisonous inflammation. One that only you can surgically cut out from your own body, in a heroic operation, with the sharp scalpel of real-world testing.

And now that I’ve given myself a shot of Novocaine by sharing this valuable idea with you, let me get out my own scalpel and start cutting:

A few days ago, I got an email from the affiliate manager behind Steal Our Winners. She’s pushing people to promote the lifetime subscription to Steal Our Winners, because the price is going up.

“Nope,” I said. “I won’t do it.”

As you might know, I regularly promote Steal Our Winners. It’s Rich Schefren’s monthly video thing, where he interviews a bunch of successful marketers, and they each share one inside tip on what’s working for them right now.

I think it’s a great product. That’s why I’m happy to promote it each month.

Except, what I always promote is the $1, one-month trial of Steal Our Winners. I think it’s an easy sell, both because Steal Our Winners is a product I personally like… and because, come on, it’s $1.

But this lifetime subscription is not $1. It’s orders of $$$$ more. Plus it’s a lifetime subscription. It sounds so final, like marriage.

That’s why I said I wouldn’t promote this offer. And yet, here we are. So let me make a confession:

I myself have bought the lifetime subscription to Steal Our Winners.

For me, it was absolutely worth it, at the price I got it at. Not just because of the great monthly content… but because of the free bonuses you get, which you can’t get anywhere else.

Like Joe Schriefer’s Copyboarding Academy.

And the Agora Financial Media Buying Bootcamp.

And Rich Schefren’s Mystery Box. (What’s inside? You gotta open up and see.)

Plus about a dozen other bonuses… along with all the back issues of Steal Our Winners.

But if you have no interest in this offer, there’s no sense in me pushing it more on you.

And if you do have some interest, this post isn’t space enough to tell you all the many things you get in the lifetime subscription to Steal Our Winners… and why it might be worth grabbing before the price goes up.

For that, I recommend checking out the link at the end of this post.

Phew.

​​I guess I’ll manage to sew this up after all, after an hour of weakness and fainting spells. So here’s one final thing:

If you do decide to get the lifetime subscription to Steal Our Winners, forward me your confirmation email. Along with your mailing address.

As my own bonus, I’ll give you a free spot in my upcoming Write-Your-Advertorial Workshop. This workshop will happen later this year, and it will cost more than the lifetime Steal Our Winners subscription costs now. (More details about this workshop to follow.)

But what about the mailing address? Why do I want that?

Because I will also mail you a bottle of Belvedere vodka. That way we can celebrate this successful and heroic operation, together, somewhere in virtual space. Na zdorovye.

Operation complete. So here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sow-lifetime

“Why don’t you ever whip me?”

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“Why don’t you ever whip me?” the colonel’s wife asked. She had already slept with the colonel’s entire brigade, but she was still eager for a little attention from the colonel himself.

“Because I’m busy,” the colonel snapped back.

That’s from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. The colonel is busy because he is obsessed with putting on parades — parades that nobody watches, parades that the soldiers hate, parades that have no practical value.

Almost as little practical value as the time you waste, polishing and pondering a project that should have shipped in one-tenth the time.

Because, like sex, money loves speed.

I once tried to track down where this phrase comes from. I got as far back as copywriter Joe Vitale, but then the trail went cold.

I always assumed money loves speed because you get more time to keep working on other projects. More work, more money.

And I’m sure that can be a part of it.

But there can be a second part also.

And that’s that money, like sex, doesn’t like desperation.

And if you act busy, even if your other project is your own parade that nobody watches, money might come around and say, “Why don’t you ever pick me up?”

“Because I’m busy,” you can then snap back. “But we can schedule something for next Friday evening.”

Oh, and I once figured out a third way in which money loves speed. It’s something practical I heard in a conversation between marketers Rich Schefren and Kim Walsh Phillips. If you’d like to hear it also:

https://bejakovic.com/the-aggressive-other-meaning-of-money-loves-speed/

The aggressive other meaning of “money loves speed”

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“There is absolutely nothing you can ever do or say that is MORE attractive than escalating quickly. Not teasing her, telling stories or having lots of social proof. Nothing comes close. Fast escalation beats them all.”
— 60 Years of Challenge

Marketing legend Dan Kennedy has a famous saying that “money loves speed.”

For the longest time, I thought that meant working faster, producing more content and offers, and getting paid more. It definitely makes sense given that Dan himself was (probably) the world’s highest paid copywriter for a time. His secret? He wrote faster and more than anybody else.

But maybe that’s not all there is to this saying.

Maybe it’s about making more money through fast product fulfillment and customers service… or through the promise of speedy results or relief from pain… or even through concentration-enhancing drugs like Ritalin.

Well, maybe those are a bit far-fetched.

​​But here’s something that’s almost certainly true. I didn’t think of it myself, but I managed to catch it when two successful marketers (Rich Schefren and Kim Walsh Phillips) mentioned it during a recent interview.

What they said was that ascending customers quickly means you will make more money.

And if you don’t know what I mean by ascending, it is standard direct response stuff: you first sell somebody a $47 newsletter, then a $197 course, then a $4997 yearly subscription service.

And what Rich and Kim were saying, as an interpretation of Dan’s “money loves speed,” is that the faster you do this — all in the same sitting is just great — the more money you will make.

Fast ascension. Not waiting weeks, months, or years to push your customers to the next level of commitment with you.

Which is pretty much the same thing you will hear in the pickup niche, where they talk about “fast escalation” as the end-all technique to attracting women.

Perhaps you find this off-putting. Or too aggressive. Perhaps it’s not for you.

But I think it’s good to at least keep it in the back of your mind. Because money — and women — love speed.

Since you’ve read this far, let’s try some fast ascension:

I write a daily email newsletter about marketing and copywriting. It’s not for everybody. But maybe you will like it. If you’d like to sign up, click here.

The shiny object psychopath in the mirror

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I read an article once about a neuroscientist who discovered he was a psychopath.

He was conducting a study and examining a bunch of brain scans.

Some of normal people, some of known psychopaths.

Murderers…

Rapists…

Successful Internet marketers.

And then, I think by accident, he also looked at his own brain scan, which was there on his desk as part of another study.

The verdict was clear:

The parts of his brain responsible for empathy and morality showed “significantly decreased activity.” He was a clear-cut psychopath.

“Whaddya know?” he said, and went on with his life as usual. ​​

Well, I had an experience like that a few days ago.

I was doing research on a market that involved a lot of business opportunity seekers, AKA “shiny object junkies.”

These people tend to fly from opportunity to opportunity, never completing a project, always believing that the next course or seminar they buy will finally set them on the path to “financial freedom.”

And while I was reading the various stories and testimonials of these unfortunate souls…

I had an unfortunate realization myself.

I might be a shiny object guy.

Not in everything, of course. I’ve made it work with copywriting, and I’ve been successful in several other areas in my life.

But with business stuff… the promise of the 4-hour work week… the magical idea of passive income… well, there I keep flitting between different projects, getting enthusiastic about the next new idea, and abandoning what I already have.

Maybe that doesn’t sound familiar to you. Or maybe it does. The point is I (and maybe you) can’t keep doing this.

The fix is simple.

You pick a project, build an asset (like a website), and let it accrue value on its own. But you have to build it up to a certain point rather than simply jumping to the next shiny thing.

Awareness of the problem is a good first step.

For example, the neuroscientist psychopath didn’t actually go on with his life as usual. I made that up. In reality, he decided to make a conscious change:

“I’ve more consciously been doing things that are considered ‘the right thing to do,’ and thinking more about other people’s feelings. At the same time, I’m not doing this because I’m suddenly nice, I’m doing it because of pride — because I want to show to everyone and myself that I can pull it off.”

So if you’ve got shiny object addiction, it’s ok. You can choose to move past it consciously. If for no other reason than to prove everybody wrong.

Airbnb arbitrage

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Over the past few days, been reading a lot about “Airbnb arbitrage.” It works like this:

You lease a house or an apartment.

You then put it up on Airbnb, with the landlord’s blessing (you might have to try a few landlords before finding one who’ll agree to it).

You outsource all the Airbnb work like cleaning and handling communications…

You pay your lease…

And you keep the difference.

In a typical case, with a couple of hours of work a month and $2k of startup capital, you can create $1k-$2k cash flow each month (the Airbnb earnings are typically 2x-3x what the rent is).

And since it requires practically no work, you can rinse and repeat with a second property, and a third, and fourth. I’ve read case studies of people who have a dozen or more of such cash-cow properties, none of which they own.

I bring this up for two reasons.

First, you might find it interesting to investigate Airbnb arbitrage yourself. It seems like a genuine opportunity right now if you get the details right. But as with all arbitrage, it won’t be around forever.

Second, I find this Airbnb arbitrage kind of inspiring.

I’ve read stories of seasoned property investors who are saying, “I can’t believe how well this works.”

In their mind, there’s no comparison to the traditional route of taking out a mortgage for $300k, buying a house, finding long term tenants, all for a couple hundo a month.

With the Airbnb scheme, you get about 10x the cash flow, with 1/100th of the risk, and you can repeat as many times as you want.

Same thing if you’re a wannabe entrepreneur and your goal is to create “passive income.”

The standard route to this utopia is to create an online business.

And it’s definitely possible.

But it’s unlikely that you’d be collecting $5k a month within 2 months, which is what many of the Airbnb arbitrage people seem to accomplish.

And the point of all this, to me at least, is the power of a change in perspective.

The right change of perspective opens up incredible opportunities, and eliminates a lot of struggle and hard work.

Even if you’re not interested in starting your own Airbnb empire, I think this is something valuable to keep in mind.

Anyways, the reason I’ve been doing all this reading about Airbnb arbitrage is because I’m rewriting a lead for a VSL. ​The VSL sells a course, which lays out all the details about how to do this Airbnb stuff successfully.

I won’t try to sell you on the course itself.

I won’t even try to sell you on hiring me to write a VSL for you. But if you want some advertorial knowledge, which you could use to create traffic that leads to a VSL, then check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/