Inspiration

An old Soviet joke from a modern Russian prison

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Here’s a Soviet joke for you:

A shy, unathletic, bookish boy is walking across a snow-covered courtyard in Moscow, past a group of kids who are playing football.

The ball rolls to the boy’s feet. He decides against habit to join in the game. He kicks the ball awkwardly, and it veers off and crashes through the window of the janitor’s apartment on the ground floor.

The janitor emerges. He’s a huge, bearded man, who has clearly been drinking. He roars and starts to chase the boy.

The boy runs for his life, thinking to himself, “Why do I need football in the cold and the snow? I should be at home, safe and comfortable, reading a book, conversing with my favorite author Ernest Hemingway.”

Meanwhile, Ernest Hemingway is in a Havana bar, drinking rum, with a salsa band playing next to him. It’s hot. Hemingway thinks to himself, “God I’m sick of this heat and rum and salsa. I should be in Paris, the center of the world, drinking Cavalos with my great friend Jean-Paul Sartre, and discussing philosophy.”

Meanwhile, Jean-Paul Sartre is in a Paris cafe, in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He’s taking part in an abstract but heated discussion that means nothing to him. “God how I’m sick of all these cigarettes and cafes and empty discussions,” thinks Sartre. I should be in Moscow, talking to my friend, the great novelist Platonov, about things that are real and mean something.

Meanwhile, back in Moscow, Platonov is running across a snow-covered courtyard. And he growls through his gritted teeth, “God I swear if I ever catch him, I’ll kill the little bastard.”

That’s from the memoirs written by Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Navalny wrote down the Soviet joke above — “my all-time favorite joke” — while in prison in the Pokrov correctional colony.

You might know Navalny’s story. Back in 2020, he was poisoned by the Russian secret service with a nerve toxin, almost died, but somehow made it to Germany to get medical treatment.

He recovered over the course of months. During this time, he cold-called Russian secret service agents and tricked them into revealing how they had poisoned him (I wrote about the crazy story ​back in December 2020​).

In spite of the assassination attempt, Navalny decided based on his principles to return to Russia.

He was promptly arrested as soon as he landed at the Moscow airport. He was then charged with embezzlement, fraud, and extremism, and was tossed in jail.

That was back in 2022.

Navalny never made it out of jail. He died earlier this year, on February 16, at age 47, under mysterious circumstances in the “Polar Wolf” prison, which sits in Western Siberia above the polar circle. “All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out but did not yield positive results,” the prison statement read.

I’m telling you this because somehow, during all this, Navalny remained cheerful and optimistic, in spite of the fact he was in prison in Siberia, in spite of the fact he had a 19-year sentence, in spite of the fact he knew he was really in for life, one way or another.

All that’s to say, if you think that whatever you’re writing about is too serious for joking, that your audience cannot and will not stand lightheartedness, that certain topics are sacred, well, it might be worth reading some of Alexei Navalny’s posts from prison. They are fascinating, inspiring, and well-written. Plus they might give you a change of mind on some things.

In case you’re curious:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/21/alexei-navalny-patriot-memoir

Last call: Tame your ox-head

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Today is the last day I will be promoting Subtraction Method, a free training by Tom Grundy.

Tom’s a London banker who writes great daily emails about career and life success. He was once in my Write & Profit coaching program.

True to its name, Tom’s Subtraction Method is about how to subtract the actions and ideas keeping you stuck.

The way I figure, Subtraction Method can be relevant if you feel stuck in your current job or role… if you get distracted and do too much of what’s NOT important… if you’re not making progress the way you feel you should be… and if you worry that there is something uniquely wrong with you as a result of all this.

But maybe a story can explain this better? Here’s an ancient story I read recently, which struck me:

There was a time when Alexander the Great wasn’t “Great” yet. Was a time when Alexander was just an ambitious 15-year-old at the court of his father, Philip of Macedon.

A horse dealer came to Philip, offering a horse for sale, for the fabulous price of 15 talents of silver.

“Yes, the price is high,” said the horse dealer. “But look at this magnificent animal.”

Sure enough, the horse he was selling was a huge wall of muscle. It had a huge head, too — hence its name Bucephalus, which in Greek apparently means “ox-head.”

The only problem was that Bucephalus was not only huge but wild. It kicked, bit, and reared up on its hind legs whenever anyone tried to ride it. It was powerful but more dangerous than useful.

Philip of Macedon took a look at the rampaging horse and said, “Thanks, I’ll pass.”

But Alexander (not yet Great) asked his father for a chance to tame Bucephalus.

Alexander noticed that the beast was made aggressive by seeing its own shadow playing on the ground.

And so, with the entire court of Philip watching, Alexander approached the giant horse.

Alexander spoke gently to calm Bucephalus a little. He took it by the bridle, and he turned its head towards the sun.

With its shadow no longer visible, Bucephalus, the ox-head, turned calm and manageable.

Bucephalus became Alexander’s lifelong companion. He carried Alexander across Alexander’s greatest conquests. He became part, parcel, and mechanism in the success and legend of Alexander the Great.

And maybe, maybe there’s an analogy in there that speaks to you?

The Subtraction Method is not my expertise. I don’t know exactly what Tom is going to be teaching.

But maybe Subtraction Method can tame your own wild and unruly ox-head — no offense meant — by turning it towards the source of light, and away from the shadows playing on the ground, distracting you, upsetting you, giving you doubts and fears, eating away at what you’re capable of?

Tom’s training is happening tomorrow, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST.

I won’t be sending more emails before then.

If you’d like to tame your own mind, ox-headed or not, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

“Get closer, sensor!”

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I’m visiting my home town of Zagreb, Croatia. Frankly, it’s looking run down, ragged, and dusty.

This morning I went for a walk. I passed by a car ramp that keeps cars out of the old medical school campus. On each side of the ramp were two installed street signs, which instructed drivers, “Get closer, sensor!”

This made me think. Zagreb is full of non-functioning tech like this. Stuff that came out 10, 20, 30 years ago and seemed exciting when it appeared. But soon, the glitches became obvious (“The stupid ramp won’t open!”).

The new tech became the butt of jokes and the foil in funny anecdotes as the burghers of Zagreb sat around and drank their coffee for hours.

People chuckled and shook their heads. “All this newfangled technology… it will never replace a good old human parking lot attendant who knows your name and who lifts and lowers the ramp for each car.”

Except of course tech improves, always.

I don’t know where you live. If it’s a less dusty place than Zagreb, odds are you’ve never seen a sign that reads “Get closer, sensor!” Modern car ramps work flawlessly, 24 hours a day, without missing a beat.

But the same psychology obtains everywhere.

New generations of people, at least those over 25, still make fun of the newest tech, once the initial excitement has worn off. “Haha stupid AI, it made another blunder, it will never really replace humans!”

Except tech improves, always.

I listened to an interview with Sam Woods a few days ago. Woods is a former direct-response copywriter turned AI guru. He seems to be doing well in his new career, and not looking back with longing to his copywriting days.

Woods was asked what remains for humans in the age of AI. He replied:

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For now, you want to get away from the labor part… you want to quickly move through the intelligence part of your job that requires you to think, and that’s where you’ll be in a good place for the next few years.

But even beyond that, you need to start moving towards what looks more and more like wisdom work, which sounds esoteric. But the easiest way to think about that is doing the right thing at the right time.

===

How do you get wisdom? How do you develop it? How do you uncover it?

I don’t know. But I know somebody who might. Because when I heard Sam Woods predict “wisdom” as the future for humans, I realized I had heard the same argument already, but months earlier. It came in one of Tom Grundy’s daily emails. Tom wrote:

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By “wisdom” I don’t mean “IQ”.

Wisdom and IQ could not be further apart.

It is categorically not the people who can create snazzy financial models, solve partial differential equations or complete a Rubik’s Cube in 60 seconds who will thrive in a world where AI can do all this in the time it takes to click my fingers.

That much should be clear.

I mean the wisdom which helps guide us to make decisions, gives us clarity when we don’t know which way to turn and answers questions which spreadsheets, robots and computers will never be able to answer.

This wisdom comes from the deepest part of what it means to be human.

And in a world where AI will do most of the heavy-lifting, I predict this wisdom is what will set humans apart.

Those who possess this wisdom will, I believe, have a huge advantage in their working lives for many years to come. Just like the Egyptian philosophers & scholars who held the positions of influence and prestige.

Good news is, finding wisdom can be taught and learnt.

===

Next Wednesday, Tom is putting on a training he’s calling The Subtraction Method. This training is free for you because you happen to be a subscriber to this newsletter.

The promise for The Subtraction Method is that it gives you an approach that uncovers the enthusiasm, creativity, and maybe even wisdom that Tom believes are there for all of us.

Those might sound like broad, vague, even esoteric promises. But maybe that’s just the ticket in an age when specific and narrow and highly practical is something that can and will be automated.

Tom’s training will happen this Wednesday, Nov 6, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST.

I will be promoting Tom’s training until this Tuesday. In case you don’t want to miss it, it might be WISE (I know, I’m hilarious) to sign up for it now. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

My new 30-day startup

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Last week, my friend Sam — we studied computer nerdery together in college — forwarded me an interview with a note that said, “Pretty inspiring.”

I listened — 3 and 1/2 hours.

The guy being interviewed was a certain Pieter Levels. Levels is a software developer who creates websites and tech tools and puts them out into the world. Some take off, others don’t. At one point, Levels launched 12 startups in 12 months.

I realized while listening that I had actually come across some of these websites before. There’s Hoodmaps, which shows you a map of your city with crowdsourced tags for each neighborhood, down to the street level. There’s Photo AI, which I guess was one of the first services to allow you to put in your broke selfies and get out rich-looking professional headshots.

Levels has this philosophy of “build cool shit.” As far as the money goes:

Hoodmaps, virally popular though it is, makes no money.

On the other hand, Remote OK, another of Levels’s websites, was making $140k/month back in 2020 (it’s now scaled back to just $10k/month).

But since Levels keeps spinning up new projects, and since most of them run independent of him after the initial sprint of work, the income starts to stack very nicely.

I’m telling you this because there’s a general insecurity that plagues my mind and maybe yours, and that is, “Will it fly? Is this the right project to embark on? Will I end up wasting my time and only get frustration and disappointment as a reward?”

One option for dealing with this insecurity is to wait for a lightning bolt from heaven to strike you and leave you with the certainty of a life mission, one that you will pursue at all cost.

Another option could be something like Levels is doing. To commit to a process. Say, a new “startup” every month, one that you make so tight and well-defined and bare-bones that it can be launched in 30 days or fewer.

At the end of your month, if you reel in your line and find nothing there, then next month, you put a new piece of bait on your hook and cast it out into the world again.

On the other hand, maybe you catch a live and possibly magical goldfish. You then gotta figure out what to do with it — throw it back, club it to death and eat it, or maybe put it inside your aquarium at home and nurture it and watch it grow.

I’ve decided to do this myself.

I will tell you my first “startup.” It’s based on something I learned from Ben Settle, in an appendix to his Email Players Skhema. That’s where Ben gives a sample 30-day email schedule, with a different prompt — “personal story,” “challenge assumptions” — for each day.

I took that idea and I’ve been using it on and off for years. At the start of the month, I spend an hour or so to plan out what kind of email to send each day, over the coming 30 days.

Even when I’m “on” with this daily prompt habit, I don’t always stick to the prompt I’ve set out for myself. Some days I have a specific thing in mind for my daily email, or something specific to promote, and that is good enough.

But in general, I’ve noticed that when I’m “off” this daily prompt habit, when I entirely improvise each day’s email, day after day, my emails take longer to write… end up trying to do too much… and are simply less effective.

On the other hand, when I follow a prompt I’ve set for myself ahead of time, it forces me to actually be more creative. Plus I get my emails done faster, and the result (based on both feedback and sales I’ve had) seems to be better than emails that are improvised from the ground up.

I can tell you this email you’re reading now was based on a prompt I set out for myself ahead of time. As they say in the software development world, I am eating my own dog food.

Over the next 30 days, I will be creating a subscription that gives you a new daily email prompt each day. The ultimate goal here is to shave shave off writing time if you’re already sending emails regularly, and to make it more likely that you send consistently if you don’t do so yet, so you keep building up the relationship with the people on your list, and so you have a real shot at making sales.

I will be offering first access to this to a small number of people on my list, based on who I think will be most likely to get value from it.

But I will make you a deal right now:

If you feel daily email prompts are something that could be useful to you, then hit reply and tell me what you like about this idea. In turn, I will add you to the priority list, so you have a chance to test this service out sooner rather than later.

Is Dan Kennedy secretly reading my emails?

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One week ago, last Friday to be exact, I wrote an email about the “quiet eye,” in which I said:

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One problem I’ve seen over and over is that people ask themselves the question, “How can I sell what I have?”

Instead of asking yourself, “How can I sell what I have,” ask yourself, “What do they want to buy?” Keep that question trained in your mind for longer than is natural. Do some research. Don’t jump ahead to what you’d like to happen, which is for people to buy what you are selling.

===

Then this past Wednesday, just two days ago, marketing legend Dan Kennedy wrote an email about constructing offers, in which he said:

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Too many business owners focus on their product first. They think, “I’ve got all these thermoses, how do I sell them?” But the truth is, you should never start with the product. You start with the customer. Who’s most likely to buy your thermos? What are their desires, their needs, their pain points?

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Dan Kennedy, the marketing master who has influenced generations of marketers both online and offline… saying the same thing as I said a few days earlier… using much the same rhetoric?

Could it be that Dan, who famously has no cell phone and a “no Internet” policy in his home, secretly gets his assistant in Phoenix to print out and fax him my emails each week… so he can read them in his Disney-memorabilia-filled basement with a few days’ delay, and be inspired and reminded of great marketing and persuasion ideas?

I’ll let you decide.

But I can tell you something like this has happened to me a few times already.

People I learned from and think of as authorities in the field — people like Dan — end up writing the same thing as I do, a short time after I write about it in an email, sometimes using much the same language.

That’s an inevitable consequence of producing an abundance of ideas by writing daily.

All that’s to say, if you don’t yet write, start.

And if you do write occasionally, then start writing more often.

Keep it up, and you will soon be writing words that others, even legends in the field, will be repeating and discussing next week and next month and next year, whether they actively copied you or not.

And of course, along the way, there’s other benefits to writing. Like building a devoted audience. And making sales, too.

And speaking of sales, you might be interested in my Simple Money Emails program.

It will show you how to write daily emails that make sales.

I’ll give away a part of the secret, because it’s not much of a secret at all. Simple Money Emails teaches you to write emails that 1) say something interesting at the start and 2) that transition into an offer.

You probably could have guessed that much.

What you might not guess is the central, most valuable idea inside Simple Money Emails, one which I repeat over and over throughout the program — a kind of litmus test for choosing which “something interesting” to open up the email with and which ones to discard.

This litmus test is actually something I learned from Dan Kennedy, and I credit him for it inside Simple Money Emails.

Because even though Dan doesn’t read or write emails (with the possible exception of my own), he long ago mastered the kind of story- and news- and pop culture-based sales messaging that works well in emails.

If you’d like to master it too, the following guide can help you get there:

​https://bejakovic.com/sme/

I’m not OK — you’re not OK

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Here’s a story I’ve been told but don’t remember:

When I was little, maybe around 2 or 3, I was in the dining room with my grandfather, who I loved better than life itself.

I started dragging a large chair around the dining room.

My grandfather told me to stop, I guess because the dragging was making noise and because the chair could topple and flatten 3-year-old Bejako.

But I didn’t stop. I kept dragging the chair around.

My grandfather again told me to stop.

I still didn’t.

So my grandfather gave me a light swat on the hand, not enough to hurt me, but enough to get my attention.

It worked. I let go of the chair. I started wailing instead. And in my childish fear and confusion, I turned to the only natural place of comfort, and that was back to my grandfather. I ran to him and hugged him and wailed away. My grandfather said later he felt so guilty that he wished for his hand, the one he had swatted me with, to dry up and fall off.

I’m reading a book now called, I’m OK — You’re OK. I’m reading it because:

I’ve learned the most about email marketing and copywriting from Ben Settle…

Ben frequently recommends a book called Start With No, by negotiation coach Jim Camp, which I’ve read a half dozen times…

Start With No is largely a rehash of ideas in a book called You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar, by sales trainer Dave Sandler, which I read for the first time earlier this year…

Sandler’s book and sales system are a mix of classic sales techniques, his own personal experimentation, and ideas coming from transactional analysis, specifically as described in the book I’m OK — You’re OK, by psychiatrist Thomas Harris.

(There’s value in working backwards like that.)

Here’s a passage in I’m OK — You’re OK that stuck out to me:

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The predominant by-product of the frustrating, civilizing process is negative feelings. On the basis of these feelings the little person early concludes, “I’m not OK.” We call this comprehensive self-estimate the NOT OK, or the NOT OK Child. This permanent recording is the residue of having been a child. Any child. Even the child of kind, loving, well-meaning parents. It is the situation of childhood and not the intention of the parents which produces the problem.

===

Like I said, this stuck out to me. Because some people had happy, stable childhoods. But even those people have a reservoir of childhood memories that make them feel not OK today. And maybe those people wonder what the hell is wrong with them. Says Harris, nothing. That’s life.

On the other hand, other people had genuinely troubled or traumatizing childhoods. They might suspect their childhood left them somehow uniquely warped and deformed, and the fact they feel not OK today proves it. But that logic is wrong, says Harris, because again, we are all not OK.

“I’m not OK — You’re not OK” is not a very inspiring message. Fortunately, the above passage is not how the book ends. In fact it only comes in chapter two. After all, the book is titled I’m OK — You’re OK.

If you’d like to know how to get out of the impulsive, frustrating, and maybe painful web of childhood memories and patterns, at least according to Thomas Harris, you can check out I’m OK — You’re OK below, and maybe learn a thing or two about sales and negotiation and copywriting in the process:

​https://bejakovic.com/ok​

Sunday morning startler

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This morning I went out for my usual walk, and as I stepped out the elevator at the bottom of my building, I felt something odd inside my shoe, right at the toe.

Probably just my sock crumpled up? Or maybe a pebble?

I sat down on the stairs to investigate.

I took off my shoe and shook it. Nothing fell out.

I looked inside. Nothing.

I reached to straighten out my sock and— GAH!! — I instinctively threw something away.

In the dim light of the building lobby, I took a closer look at what I had just touched and tossed.

It turned out to be a live gecko that had been stuck to my sock. It must have crawled into my shoe during the night and gone to sleep.

It’s no big mystery how the gecko got inside my shoe.

The Mediterranean house gecko is endemic to the Barcelona area.

I’ve often seen the little guys inching their way up the outside walls of my building.

For the record, I live on the 9th floor.

It must take a whole evening for a gecko to slowly make his way up the wall to where I live. But I guess it doesn’t matter to them. They like high places… time is passing anyhow… and so they might as well climb.

Now that I’ve opened up this fascinating topic, let me go full-gecko:

You might know the Geico Gecko slogan, “15 minutes could save you 15% on your car insurance.”

Well, I got an update for you:

“$10-$15 could get you 10-15 new subscribers on your email list.”

For the past few days, I’ve been promoting a new offer with that promise. The background:

I will be building up a new list I’ve launched via paid ads, starting at $10-$15 a day, and aiming to get 10-15 subscribers for that money.

If you like, you can follow the same process I will be following (a course by an expert list builder, which costs $495), plus you can get my copywriting feedback and marketing insight as a free bonus.

10-15 new subscribers a day is not exactly a rocket launch.

But like my shoe gecko shows, a bit of progress, repeated consistently, gets you up to high places, and sooner than you might think.

Like I wrote yesterday, I will be promoting this offer for another week.

But if you decide you want to jump in by the end of today, at 12 midnight PST, I will do two things:

1. I will put you into the Skool community as soon as I open it up on Monday

2. I’ll give you a special mystery bonus to say thanks. This special mystery bonus is about a strategy that’s not covered in the list-building blueprint I will be following… but a strategy that I’ve used in the past to offset the cost of running ads, and in one case even eliminate it

Of course, don’t decide now if want to join me or not. Simply decide if this sounds interesting to you, and and if it does, hit reply and say so. I can get you the full details, and you can decide then, and maybe even in time for today’s mini-deadline.

Just suck it up

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HER: “Are you upset with me?”

ME: “No, I’m just in a bad mood.”

HER: “What’s wrong?”

ME: “I really don’t want to talk about it.”

HER: “Ok… but is it something I did?”

ME: “No, but I really don’t want to discuss it.”

HER: “I see… but maybe I can help? If you would just tell me what’s wrong…”

This is the kind of conversation I’ve had a thousand and one times with various girlfriends.

Whenever I’m feeling upset, bad, uncertain, miserable, the last thing I want to do is discuss it.

In my experience, bad moods tend to pass — sleep fixes almost anything.

​​But when I try to give a form to my bad moods, when I crystalize the dark clouds in my head into little droplets called words, then somehow all that negativity becomes real and permanent. And if I go one step beyond, and share those words with somebody else, it becomes doubly real and permanent.

HER: “Are you still feeling bad about X?”

ME: No. [thinking to myself, no, I wasn’t, until now.]

This is not to put the blame on any of my ex gfs. I know they were just trying to help. I also know I’m the odd one out, and that most people actually feel better when they discuss what’s bothering them.

BUT!

I was still pleased to come across a study a while back, published in the prestigious journal Science, that pretty much backed me up.

Two cognitive scientists at Cambridge had a hypothesis that suppressing negative thoughts not only would not harm mental health… but would actually improve it.

They set up an experiment where they trained some 120 people, across 6 countries, in the techniques of sucking it up. The result was just as they predicted:

– no paradoxical increase in negative thoughts
– less frequent, less vivid, and less anxiety-producing negative thoughts

So there you go — just suck it up.

Or don’t.

It’s likely that this Cambridge study is just a swing of the pendulum. We’ve been told for so long that it’s important to express what you feel, it was inevitable somebody somewhere would try to say otherwise.

And I’m sure that if you like to talk things out when you feel bad, there are plenty of studies to back you up also.

Maybe it’s just like Walker Percy said, that modern science cannot say anything about you specifically as an individual.

That’s my bit of inspiration for you for this Sunday.

​​If you want some more, you can find it in my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Most of those commandments have to do with copywriting and marketing. But a few have to do with thinking and living. As you can imagine, those are the most valuable ones. If you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The most likely solution to all your problems

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At the risk of sounding like an idiot, let me pay off today’s subject line by telling you about my olive tree:

I have a small olive tree on my balcony. It arrived as a present for my birthday two years ago.

(Btw, if you ever want to get me a present I’ll love, a plant is a good bet.)

Right now, my olive tree is thriving. It’s got lots of healthy leaves. Small shoots are popping out everywhere. There’s even one green olive that’s maturing, which I’m planning to cure when it’s fully ripe.

But earlier this year, my olive tree was only causing me worry.

Each day, I went out onto the balcony to inspect it. Leaf after leaf was turning yellow and falling off. No new shoots were visible anywhere. At this pace, my olive would soon become barren and die.

I stood there each day, inspecting my olive tree and worrying.

Was it some kind of fungal infection? Had the soil become depleted? Was it bad feng shui?

It was only after weeks or maybe months of this that it occurred to me that the olive tree might be parched for water.

I mean, it’s sitting on my balcony, exposed to the blasting Barcelona sun, for many hours a day, day after day. Maybe a cup or two of water, twice a week, just wasn’t enough for all the heat?

That’s why I said I risked sounding like an idiot.

I told you how healthy and thriving my olive tree is today. Watering it every day is the only change I made from then to now.

Watering a plant is the most obvious thing to do to keep it alive and healthy. And yet, I thought of every other rare and novel explanation first, while my olive tree turned yellow and withered.

Now that I’ve risked sounding like an idiot, let me risk sounding like your mother:

Maybe don’t have an olive tree. But maybe there’s another area of life that’s struggling, withering, or causing you worry. Maybe it’s family, or your health, or your business.

A rare and novel explanation might really lie behind your problems.

But more likely, there’s a common, obvious explanation to it all.

You can’t keep going the way you’ve been going, inspecting and worrying. Most likely, you just gotta water more regularly – or do whatever the equivalent is for the problem you’re seeing.

But enough gardening wisdom. On to sales:

Maybe you have a business. Maybe you’re working too hard, or you’re not making consistent sales, not as many as you’d like.

What’s the real reason?

Maybe you need to optimize your ads… or increase the conversion rate on your landing pages… or innovate and come up with totally new products, new funnels, new sources of traffic.

Maybe.

Or maybe just gotta get your existing customers to pay you more frequently. Maybe you just gotta email them more, instead of allowing them to wither away. And if you want something to make your emailing easier and faster:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Why I sent you an empty email yesterday

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

“Hmm??”

“Huh??”

“Wha—??”

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

“Why?? Why?? WHY?? I need do know”

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

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

Two things about this strange event:

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

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

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

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

So my brief inspirational message to you:

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

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

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