Inspiration

The success secret that successful people won’t tell you

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Today I want to tell you about the quarter game. Hypnotist Mike Mandel wrote about it a few days ago:

You imagine you will find a quarter somewhere today, as though it’s been left deliberately for you. And Mike says, more often than not, it turns out to be true.

Now, as you might have noticed, I’m a sucker for magic and magical thinking.

I mean, over the past month alone, I’ve sent emails about blindsight… the illusory nature of reality… my own tendency to see mystical significance in trivial events… and even a religious epiphany I experienced at age 20.

And here I am today, telling you to manifest quarters into your life.

I wish I could control myself better so I could look a little more serious and professional… and stop myself from morphing into the male, copywriting version of Rhonda Byrne, the Australian TV producer who made that movie The Secret.

But what to do? Here’s my story:

Yesterday, I went out for a walk. And I played the quarter game for the first time. I told myself I’d find a quarter, as though it had been left deliberately for me.

After a few minutes of walking around, I didn’t find a single quarter.

But then I told myself, “You know what, quarters are fine. But what would be really great is if I found that missing license plate.”

Because this past Sunday, I went to my car — actually, my mom’s 20-year-old white Audi, which I have been using for past six months — and I found the front license plate was gone.

This is a huuuge hassle.

Where I am right now (Croatia), it means I have to go to the police, report the license plate as missing, apply to get a whole new set, then update documents, insurance, the vehicle inspection. It’s such a pain in the ass that I have been ignoring it and instead just not using the car for the past few days.

That’s why it would have been great to “manifest” that license plate back into my life.

It would save me hours or days of sitting around in government offices, filling out paperwork, driving around town… or alternately, stressing that cops will pull me over and fine me and harass me if I don’t do all that.

So there I was yesterday, with the sudden idea to play the license plate game. And the darnedest thing happened.

Within five minutes, I had the missing license plate in my hand. I found it over a wall and down a ditch, in some bushes, close to where my car — well, my mom’s car — had been parked.

I’m not sure how the license plate got there. And I’m not sure exactly how I had the idea to check there.

All I know is that, had I not read Mike Mandel’s email… and had I not half-jokingly played the quarter game… I would not have thought to play the license plate game, or search for the license plate where I did find it. As though somebody had deliberately left it there for me.

But let me wrap this up. Here’s a quote from Eric Hoffer’s book True Believer, about the psychology of revolutions, religions, and other mass movements:

“The remarkable thing is that the successful, too, however much they pride themselves on their foresight, fortitude, thrift and other ‘sterling qualities,’ are at bottom convinced that their success is the result of a fortuitous combination of circumstances. The self-confidence of even the consistently successful is never absolute.”

Hoffer’s point is that people only attempt real change when they feel they have their hands on some “irresistible power.” And this irresistible power is almost always something outside themselves… or at least outside the limits they feel to be their own identity.

Such, it seems, is human psychology. You can fight it. Or you can work with it.

If you can work with it in a socially acceptable way, good for you.

But even if you end up at risk of looking like a male Rhonda Byrne, it’s still a pretty good deal to make.

Because if you just rely on your own “sterling qualities,” odds are you end up sitting around government offices for days… pulling your hair out… and cursing the stupidity and injustice of the world.

The alternative is to effect change in your life without all that stress. And all you have to do is believe — in magic if you have to — and play the game every day.

Last thing:

Every day, I write an email about copywriting, marketing, or woo-woo topics like manifesting quarters. If you’d like these emails to magically manifest themselves in your inbox each day, you can sign up here.

An inspiring story of blindsight

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One day in 1988, a woman named Diane Fletcher was taking a shower when she passed out and fell to the floor.

​​The water heater in her bathroom wasn’t properly ventilated. It was leaking carbon monoxide. That’s why Diane passed out.

She survived – her husband found her some 20 minutes later — but there were consequences.

For one thing, Diane was completely blind the first few days. Then gradually, the crude basics of her vision returned — some color and texture. But she never regained the ability to distinguish or recognize objects.

Put two wooden blocks in front of Diane, and ask her which is bigger. She would just shrug — she didn’t see either one.

But then, ask Diane to pick up one of the blocks. Her hand would shoot right towards it. Along the way, her thumb and fingers would adapt so she could grab the block perfectly.

And it wasn’t a one-time thing, either.

Put a box with a slit in it in front of Diane, and ask her which way the slit is facing, horizontally or vertically. Again, Diane couldn’t say.

But put a letter in Diane’s hand and ask her to put that letter in the slot. She did this perfectly each time — regardless of how the box was turned, even though she couldn’t “see” the slit.

It turned out Diane had “blindsight.” That’s the clever name some scientist gave to the condition.

From what I understand:

The neural pathway that goes from your eyes to the rest of your brain splits in two along the way.

One fork of this pathway goes up. It leads to the regions of your brain that interpret what you are looking at. This part of your brain also seems to cause the conscious sensation of seeing.

But another half of the pathway goes down. That part of your brain actually moves you around in space, based on visual input.

In some cases of blindsight, the consequences can be even more total and extreme than for Diane.

Some people with blindsight can be completely blind. They can’t consciously see anything. No color, no texture, nothing.

And yet, they can still see fine when it comes to movement. Another part of their brain, in charge of another part of vision, outside of conscious experience, is still working perfectly.

I don’t know about you, but I thought this blindsight stuff was absolutely incredible. It made me wonder how much people like Diane can get done on faith alone.

Yes, she had the absolute personal experience of not being able to see. But could she walk down an unfamiliar staircase without tumbling to the bottom… even though she couldn’t “see” the stairs?

Could she go outside and walk around a park? Could she avoid tripping over roots and never slam face-first into a tree… just by putting one foot in front of the other, over and over?

I don’t know. And I don’t want to get all Robert Collier-y, “Secret of the Ages” on you, and claim you can manifest anything you can imagine.

Bit I will tell you I’ve been to both extremes in my life.

I’ve spent many years sulking in the corner, arms crossed tightly, frown on my face, lower lip pouting out… because I knew for a fact, based on hard personal experience and intuition as well… that I didn’t have the biological talent needed to achieve the things I wanted.

But then I’ve also had moments in my life, which sometimes stretched out into months and years. During these moments, I tapped into magical new ways of being. I suddenly found myself with innate skills and abilities I never dreamed I could have.

Maybe that sounds a little abstract. Maybe you want some specific examples of these transformations I experienced.

Fine. But let’s keep that for another time. Right now, I just want to leave you with the following possibility:

You might have your own blindsight. Or maybe many of them. Not through brain damage. But just by virtue of being human.

The fact is, the unconscious part of our existence is a deep and mysterious thing.

There might be quiet little zombies inside you, working away right now… solving complex problems and providing you with unique and powerful talents and skills… completely outside of your consciousness or awareness.

And yet they are there, working on your behalf, or ready to do so.

All you have to do is to put yourself in a situation where those zombies have a chance to apply their diligent work. Well, that… plus you gotta have some faith.

Ok, that’s all the inspiration I can give you for today.

I might have something new tomorrow. If you want to read that, consider signing up for my email newsletter.

100,000 bad emails

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“I was a profound failure. Not really profound enough. I kind of slid in the middle of failure. Some of us were picturesque. I was just dull.”

Chuck Jones went to art college at age 15.

You might have heard of Chuck Jones before. He eventually became the Oscar-winning animator behind the best Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons… the creator of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote… and the director of How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

But back at art college, Jones found everyone else was taller and could draw infinitely better than him.

He was dejected. One thing that helped him was a teacher who stepped in front of the whole class and said:

“Every one of you has 100,000 bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better it will be for everybody.”

This includes everybody who signed up for my Influential Emails training. They’ve all been getting emails from me. I want to know why they signed up, and what they hope to get out of it. One guy replied:

For me, the challenge is finding ideas that seem unrelated, connecting them to create insights and then communicate them in an intriguing way without sounding fake.

In all honesty, its to remove the fear of I don’t know what to write with the confidence that I have a process for figuring out exactly what to do.

I’ll talk about the specifics of my process inside Infuential Emails. But honestly, the comment above brilliantly lays out the gist of my process, in just one sentence. That’s all you need to get started. That, along with the Chuck Jones quote above to get over any lingering fear.

But wait, there’s more!

This is part of a bigger thing I’ve found in life.

Many times, if I’m faced with a brick wall in my path and I can’t see any way through it, I’ll take out a piece of paper. And I’ll start writing down my currently available ideas.

“#1. Bang head against wall. #2 Beat fists against wall. #3 Lie down and die. #4….” When I free up my brain of bad ideas that take me nowhere, I sometimes find good ideas underneath.

Do you remember the rejection game? It was a trendy thing some 10 years ago.

Each day the goal was to get somebody to tell you no. As soon as you did that, you succeeded. The point was to keep the streak going for as long as you could.

I tried it back then. It was surprisingly fun and liberating.

Because when you seek out and reward yourself for reaching what you normally avoid, you don’t just achieve more. You reframe what success means.

Did you find this informative and motivational? Are you ready to get going writing something yourself? If so, good.

But did you think I’ve written more coherent and interesting emails in the past, and that this isn’t among one of my standouts?

Even better. I’ve just gotten rid of another one of those 100,000 bad emails, and freed up my brain for something new and possibly amazing the next time I sit down to write. And you can do the same, starting today.

Growth, infinity, destiny (plus an early-bird sale)

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I once wrote a list of 10+ ways to inspire people. Each way came from a piece of copy that made my heart beat faster and my breathing quicker.

On occasion, I still come across a new way to inspire, one I haven’t noticed before. For example, take a look at this section of an old sales letter:

No man can read Wells’ without realizing that the whole purpose of existence is growth — that life is dynamic, not static. That it is ever moving forward — not standing still. That electricity, magnetism, gravitation, light, are all but different manifestations of the same infinite and eternal energy in which we ourselves live and move and have our being.

Wells gives you an understanding of your own potentialities. You learn from it how to work with and take advantage of the infinite energy all about you. The terror of the man at the crossways, not knowing which road to take, is no terror to the reader of Wells. His future is of his own making. For the only law of infinite energy is the law of supply. The ‘life-principle’ that formed the dinosaur to meet one set of needs and the butterfly to meet another is not going to fail in your case. You have but to understand it — to work in harmony with it — to get from it what you need.

This copy was selling a book called The Outline of History. The Outline of History! How boring can you get?

And yet, the copy above is inspiring. At least to me. So I asked myself why.

My best answer is that it talks about growth, infinity, destiny. About massive and awesome forces, and how they are inside us and all around us.

These aren’t ideas I see discussed in sales copy a lot today. (The sales letter above was from 100 years ago.)

Still, growth and infinity and destiny might be worth keeping in your inspiration quiver… and pulling out on occasion when you have a tough and woolly beast to bring down.

For example:

Have you thought recently about the pulsing, never-stopping growth of the entire world of commerce? How the interconnected mesh of billions of human beings, doing deals, all across the globe, is constantly expanding? And how money — the trillions of dollars and euros and yuan out there — is just a measure of the action and reaction you can motivate in other people?

I’ve thought about it.

And that’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to work as a copywriter. So I can learn to motivate action in other people… and to do it at an almost unlimited scale.

And in that vein, I have an offer for you today.

Starting next week, I will be promoting my Copy Riddles program, because a new run of this program will kick off on September 20.

As you might know, Copy Riddles gives you the fundamental and unavoidable rules of how to motivate action and reaction in other people.

How to get them bothered and unsettled with desire…

How to get them to lie awake at night, puzzling over the paradox and intrigue you’ve put in their heads…

How to quiet the critical devil on their shoulder, which is whispering in their ear that your offer can’t possibly be as good as it sounds.

So if you like, you can join Copy Riddles next week to find out all that stuff. As I said, I will be promoting Copy Riddles all week long, at full price.

Or you can choose to join Copy Riddles right now. For a 29.1% discount off the official price. Just head to the page below, and apply the coupon code GROWTH&INFINITY at checkout. The price will adjust automatically.

This offer is only good until tomorrow at 9pm CET. You can think of it as my way of saying thank you for your reading this post now, all the way to the end.

So if you’re ready to start working in harmony with the great pulsing law of human desire… and to get from it what you need, from here till eternity, at a 29.1% discount… then here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Burn objections out of your prospect’s mind using nothing more than a tiny success

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What’s the Spanish word for “different”?

I don’t speak Spanish. But here’s a trick:

When a word in English ends in “ent,” you can tack on an “e” at the end. More often than not, you get the right Spanish word.

So try it now.

Tack an “e” onto “different.” You get “differente.” And that’s how the Spanish and about 200 million South Americans would say it in their own tongue. Same with persistente, permanente… you get the gist.

With a few simple rules like that, an English speaker gets around 3,000 words in Spanish for free.

Not bad. Definitely enough for basics of conversation. Also more than most adult language learners ever manage to memorize.

I learned about this in a teach-yourself-Spanish course called Language Transfer. This course is available for free online. But if it wasn’t… everything I just told you would be a hell of a thing to put into a sales letter to promote and sell this course.

Because demonstration is the most powerful form of proof.

And if you can demonstrate to your prospect that he’s already on his way… then much of his skepticism and doubt will disappear.

By the way, this is not limited to language learning only.

As just one example, there’s Gene Schwartz’s famous “BURN DISEASE OUT OF YOUR BODY” ad. It ran successful for over 20 years. I’m sure that part of its success was that, under subhead three, it gives you an exercise you can try for yourself. “Sit or stand, with your hands simply extended in front of your chest…” You will feel the energy flowing, and your heart getting stronger.

One final point:

You don’t need to give away the farm. Just give your prospect a tiny success, right there on the sales page. If you can do that, you will burn objections out of his mind. What’s going to be left is an innocent and pure desire to buy your product… and find out what else it can do.

Ok, now for business:

I write an email newsletter about marketing and persuasion. If you like, click here to subscribe to it.

Multiplication inspiration

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At the ugly age of 12, when I moved from Croatia to California, I made friends with a boy named Mike.

Mike was Mormon, and was one of six brothers and sisters. Other Mormon families I met were just as prolific.

One day, I asked Mike why it’s a thing in the Mormon community to replicate at such a vicious rate. He shrugged. “It says in the Bible to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” (I checked. It’s true. God says it to Noah after the big flood.)

Speaking of replenishing the earth, here’s a quote from the most successful direct mail promotion of all time:

“It doesn’t give me any pleasure to predict these things. But I want to get this information out to as many people as I can… because you can prepare yourself. And those you love can avoid this catastrophe. And the more of us who preserve our wealth, the better it will be for our country when the time comes to rebuild.”

That’s from The Plague of the Black Debt, a tiny booklet, written by Lee Euler. Back in the 90s, this booklet got hundreds of thousands of new customers for a little-known publisher called Agora.

There’s a big persuasion lesson hidden in these two examples.

You probably see it.

In case you don’t, I won’t spell it out here. But I did spell it out when I sent this article as an email to my newsletter subscribers.

You can subscribe to that newsletter here.

And why would you want to do that?

Well, to learn more about copywriting and marketing. But also, because the more good people who learn about powerful persuasion influence techniques, the better it will be for the world when the time comes to rebuild after covid-19.

Protests and anxiety relief

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Starting two weeks ago, I’ve been living in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, don’t know anyone, and really have no good reason to be.

And with my typical lack of planning or foresight, I managed to arrive at a time when there are anti-government protests going on day and night. I can hear them outside my window right now — horns, drums, whistles, cowbells, and a large mass of people chanting, “Resign!” in the local language.

I don’t mean to make it sound bad because it’s not. Mostly I’m having a great time here.

​​But, with the uncertainty and the language barrier and the constant cowbells, there are many moments when I get anxious. Out of nowhere, my brain will serve up scenarios of trouble, danger, and pain that could happen to me, all alone and unprotected in this great big world.

When those moments pop up, and they pop up often, I go back to a passage I read in Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-Cybernetics:

“You do not have to answer the telephone. You do not have to obey. You can, if you choose, totally ignore the telephone bell.”

Maltz is using the telephone as a metaphor (metonym?) for anxiety-causing events and thoughts. If you too get anxious thoughts now and soon after, maybe this metaphor will help you. Plus I’d like to add two things to what Maltz wrote.

First, you don’t have to feel guilty because the phone started to ring.

​​In other words, just because bad thoughts popped up in your head, this doesn’t make it more likely you will in fact experience trouble, danger, and pain. You can be plenty successful in life, even with a constantly ringing phone line.

Second, this is not some Deepak Chopra-ish claim that you can always be happy and healthy if you just set your mind to it.

​​If the phone rings while you’re napping, you will wake up. There’s no sense in pretending that you’re still asleep. But you can go to another room where the ringing isn’t as loud… or you can even put on some Brian Eno ambient music, to drown out the ringing until the damn thing shuts up.

Speaking of incessant rattling:

I write a daily email newsletter. Mostly it’s about marketing and copywriting, with occasional detours into self-help, like today. If you’d like to get this thing ringing in your inbox each day, click here to subscribe.

“A hell of a habit to get into and just about as hard to get out”

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David Ogilvy, a stylish copywriter who started one of the biggest marketing agencies in the world, once wrote that, of the “six giants who invented modern advertising,” at least five were gluttons for work.

One of Ogilvy’s marketing giants was Claude Hopkins, who may have been the first A-list copywriter of all time.

​​A century ago, Hopkins amassed a fortune by writing profit-generating ads for big brands, many of which still survive today — Palmolive and Quaker Oats and Pepsodent.

He also wrote a book called Scientific Advertising, which has become a kind of bible in the field. (According to Ogilvy, nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book at least seven times.)

Hopkins was certainly a glutton for work. He worked 16-hour days, every day, including Sundays — his “best working days, because there were no interruptions.”

Sounds horrendous, right? But here’s the thing that struck me about Claude Hopkins and his love of work. From his autobiography, My Life in Advertising:

“All the difference lay in a different idea of fun. […] So the love of work can be cultivated, just like the love of play. The terms are interchangeable. What others call work I call play, and vice versa. We do best what we like best.”

In other words, work can become fun, if you work at it. Maybe you find that thought encouraging. I know I sometimes do.

Other times, though, all I remember is what Hemingway said about work: “It’s a hell of a habit to get into and it’s just about as hard to get out.”

So what’s my point? No point. It’s Sunday, after all, a day of rest for non-gluttons. Enjoy and relax. We’ll get back to points, well-made or not, tomorrow.

For more content like this, you might like my daily email newsletter.

Techno party inspiration

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So I went to an elite techno party last night. I’m not a fan of techno or a fan of parties, but it was illuminating.

A techno party, I found out, is a bunch of white people, wearing sunglasses at night, stiffly feeling the beat, and furiously stomping the ground.

There was a local DJ who got things moving, and then the main act came on. The crowd — maybe around a thousand people — went wild. Since I am not a part of the techno world and I can’t understand the music at all, I found that incredible. And that’s what I want to share with you today.

Most people — myself included, and perhaps you too — can’t really fathom how many human beings there are in the world right now. The fact is, whatever you do, however bizarre, there are people out there in every city of the world who will gladly line up, give you their money, and defer to your authority for a while.

Of course, I’m not just talking about techno or music. This same thing happens in marketing or any other business too.

People are looking for entertainment… for an authority… for somebody with a unique voice. That can be you.

I’m not saying it will be easy or immediate. But right now, all around the world, there are people who would love to became a part of your audience — if only you start writing, creating, or producing something.

Speaking of which:

I’ve got a daily email newsletter. It’s mainly about persuasion and marketing. Sometimes about techno. In case you’d like to try it out and see if it’s the kind of thing you want in your life for a few minutes each day, here’s where to sign up.

“He could never defeat the second-guessing”

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Imagine for just a moment you are an MMA fighter, stepping into the octagon. The door locks behind you. Across from you is a guy who has been trained to kick your head clean off your shoulders.

Suddenly, the ref waves you both on. Your opponent starts to charge towards you, ready to kill.

And then, instead of feeling your own killer instinct taking over, you hear a voice in your head that says, “Oh God. I can’t do this. I shouldn’t be here. Everybody’s gonna see I shouldn’t be here.”

I’ve read various copywriters say they feel like a fraud or an impostor. You might think this fear is unique to this sensitive, snowflakey profession. But no. Even much tougher people get struck by the same panic.

For example, I watched a short clip today in which Chael Sonnen and Uriah Hall, two of the world’s best mixed martial artists, talk about self-doubt and lack of confidence.

Sonnen, the more experienced of the two, has this to say:

“One of the huge things I realized is that everybody’s going through it. I used to think there’s something wrong with me. I used to be really embarrassed about it. And I talked to Randy Couture [a legendary MMA fighter] about it. And Randy said that the one thing he learned is, he could never defeat it. He could never defeat the second-guessing or the negative voice in his head. And he just learned, I just gotta compete with it.”​

Here’s my point:​​

It’s worthwhile looking at your inner demons now and then, and putting in some work to cast them out. Maybe you will be successful in your exorcism one day. But don’t count on it.

The good news is, it’s possible to be plenty successful even with a lot of self-doubt. Others have done it before you. You can too.

You just have to accept that the “I can’t do this” demon will probably continue to sit on your shoulder, whispering panic-inducing thoughts to you, while you act regardless.

“Yes, you’re right,” you can tell him. “I can’t do this. Just give me a second. I need to punch this guy in the face.”

Here’s another demon you might hear whispering to you:

At first you think he’s saying, “Email newsletter.” So you lean in closer.

The demon says, “A new email each day, about persuasion and marketing.”

You lean in still closer. Suddenly, the demon grabs you by the ear. “Sign up here,” he whispers.