Inspiration

A mystery about people who willingly live in hell

by

A few months ago, I was reading a New Yorker article about foreign nationals — Americans, Frenchmen, Kiwis — who volunteered to fight in Ukraine.

I found the article fascinating. I mean, ask yourself:

What makes someone willing to go halfway around the world, into a war zone, to live in a basement and crawl through mud and huddle in icy trenches, as constant explosions blow out his eardrums and traumatize his nervous system?

What makes a person willing to expose himself to getting shot at and wounded and possibly killed? And what makes him willing to shoot and wound and possibly kill others, who have never done any harm to him or his kind?

Most incredibly, what makes a person do all this voluntarily, without any promise of reward or even any real chance at glory, and without the usual government coaxing or propaganda or impressment?

“Maybe,” you say, “these foreign fighters are fighting for freedom, for justice, for the right thing. Maybe they feel they are doing their duty, as soldiers and as human beings.”

No doubt.

​But taking a page from Frank Bettger’s book, let me ask you one further:

In addition to doing the right thing, what other reason might these foreign fighters have to willingly put themselves in what most people would consider a living hell?

Take a moment to think about that. And when you’re done, read about it from the horse’s mouth, or rather, from the Turtle’s mouth. Here’s a bit from the New Yorker article, about a New Zealander fighting in Ukraine, code name Turtle:

===

In New Zealand, he’d been “planning out the rest of my life with a girl.” Before coming to Ukraine, he’d ended the relationship, quit his job, and sold his house and car. “In hindsight, it was very selfish,” he acknowledged. Although he may have suggested to his friends and relatives that Russian atrocities — in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha and elsewhere — had instilled in him a sense of obligation, such moral posturing had been disingenuous. “It was just an excuse to be in this environment again,” Turtle said.

===

Turtle had spent a large and formative part of his life fighting in war zones — he was first sent to Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 17.

Today, a generation later, he’s left his house, his car, his job, and Mrs. Turtle back in the Shire, and he’s decided to trade all that in for an environment he is more familiar with — an army unit in Mordor.

​​“In the end, it’s just that I love this shit,” Turtle said. “And maybe I can’t escape that — maybe that’s the way it’s always gonna be.”

All that’s to say:

Never underestimate how powerful the pull of the familiar, the known, the status quo is on people, even if that status quo is hell on earth.

And that’s it. That’s my possibly sobering psychological insight for you for today. Think about how it might apply to you and the people you deal with regularly, and maybe you can get some value out of it.

As for me, the time has come for my once-in-a-blood-moon pitch for my coaching program on email marketing and copywriting.

It might seem tacky to put a sales pitch at the end of an email about extreme self-sacrifice, or extreme self-immolation. I do it because extreme cases uncover the everyday cases. In any case, here’s my pitch.

I’ve only let in two kinds of people into my coaching program so far:

1. Business owners who want to use email to build a stronger, longer-lasting relationship with their prospects and customers, in order to sell more and to sell more easily

2. Copywriters who have a profit-share agreement with a client to manage an email list, allowing a large degree of control and an upside when things go well

There are multiple reasons why I restrict my coaching program to only those two groups of people. If you’re curious, I’ll tell you one reason, which is that my coaching program is expensive. I only want the kinds of people to join who can quickly get much more out of this coaching than what they pay me.

So if you fit one of the two categories above, and if you’re interested in my coaching program, then hit reply, tell me about yourself, and we can talk in more detail.

And in case you’re wondering whether a coaching program is something you possibly need:

I can tell you that personally, in most areas of life where I’ve had success, I didn’t have and didn’t need any kind of coach. Instead, I either figured it out myself, or I followed a book or a course to the letter, and got results that way.

On the other hand, there have been a few areas where I hired a coach, and even paid that coach lots and lots of money.

As I’ve written before, some of the value I got from coaching was genuine technical feedback. Some of the value was added confidence, via getting an experienced second pair of eyes to look over what I was doing.

But the majority of the value I got from expensive coaching — I would say 75% — came from having to justify the price to myself. From finally being forced to abandon the status quo, and to do things I should have been doing already, but found excuses not to do.

Maybe you say that’s stupid or illogical. All I can say is that this get-out-of-the-status-quo motivation made coaching absolutely worth it to me, and made it pay for itself many times over.

So do you need coaching?

Only you can decide if you’re stuck in the status quo, and if you find that unacceptable. If you decide the answer is yes, then like I said, write me an email, and we can talk in more detail to see whether my coaching program and you could be a good fit.

I made $1,100 so I decided to spend $6,000 more

by

Two weeks ago, I was talking to copywriter Vasilis Apostolou, and he told me of a direct marketing conference that’s happening in May in Poland.

The conference is small but features some people I very much respect, foremost among them A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos and marketer Matt Bacak.

I asked Vasilis how much it costs to get in. He told me. I groaned.

$3,000 just for the ticket. And then there’s travel, a place to stay, plus 3-4 days lost from work.

This past Thursday, I got on a podcast-like interview with Jen Adams from the Professional Writers Alliance. Last December, I wrote some articles for PWA about my 10 Commandments book, and I got paid $1k for those articles. I got paid an extra $100 for this podcast-like appearance.

​​Getting paid $1,100 is a nice way to do self-promotion – but it’s not enough.

Last summer, I paid $1,200 for the Dig This Zoom calls. I found out about the PWA writing opportunity through the Discord channel for people who bought those Dig calls. So far, I’ve made back $1,100 of that $1,200 via this PWA thing. That means I still have $100 to make up somewhere.

I’ve written before how I have made back all the money I’ve paid for specific copywriting and marketing education.

​​Tens of thousands on coaching with Dan Ferrari… thousands on newsletters and books with Ben Settle… $297 for the Parris Lampropoulos webinars back in 2019. That last one, by the way, is my most winning investment. When I add up all the extra money I can directly trace back to Parris’s training, I estimate it to have been about a 300x return.

The thing is, all those returns turned out to be unconscious, after-the-fact, well-would-you-look-at-that results.

​​But I’ve since told myself not to make this into a matter of coincidence or luck. I’ve since made it a matter of attitude. I now put in thought and effort to make sure any investment, regardless of how small or large, has to eventually pay for itself.

That’s an outcome that’s impossible to control if you are buying stocks or bonds or race horses. But it’s quite possible to control if you are buying education, opportunities, or connections.

I will see what happens once those PWA articles get published and once interview goes live. Maybe one of those PWA people will join my list, buy something from me, and pay me that missing $100. Unless I can track $100 of extra sales to that, I will have to think what else I can do to make those Dig Zoom calls pay for themselves.

Likewise with that Poland conference. ​I decided to go. I budgeted $6k total for it — actual groan-inducing cost plus opportunity cost.

​​In other words, I will have to figure out a way to make the event pay me at least $6k. And I set myself the goal to have it happen within the first seven days after conference ends. I’m a little nervous about achieving that, but to me that signals that it’s possible.

So now I have three calls-to-action for you:

1. If you are planning to be there in Poland in May, let me know and we can make a point of meeting there and talking.

2. If you somehow already got on my list via PWA, hit reply and let me know. I’m curious to hear what you’re up to and why you decided to join. And if you’re thinking of writing a book like my 10 Commandments book, I might be able to give you some inspiration or advice.

3. If neither of the above applies to you, then my final offer is my Copy Riddles program. It costs $400. If you do decide to buy it, I encourage you to think of how you can make this investment directly and trackably pay for itself, and then some.

You might wonder if that’s really possible.

​​It is.

​​So today, instead of pointing you to the Copy Riddles sales page, let me point you to an email I wrote last year about a Copy Riddles member named Nathan, who doubled his income as an in-house copywriter, and who credits Copy Riddles for a chunk of that increase. ​​In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/how-to-bombard-copywriting-clients-with-extra-value-at-no-extra-effort/

How to make your content eternally interesting even if it’s not very “good”

by

During my 11 years living in Budapest, Hungary, I walked up and down Nagymező street perhaps a thousand times. Each time, I looked up at the Robert Capa museum and I told myself, “I should really go there.”

As you might know, Robert Capa was one of the most famous and influential photographers of the 20th century. What you might not know is that the man’s real name was Endre Friedmann, and he was Hungarian – hence the museum on Nagymező utca.

I did eventually make it to that museum, and I did eventually find out some curious Robert Capa facts. They might be useful to you if you write or take photos or build elaborate Lego creations.

​​For example:

Capa published his first photo as a freelance journalist in 1932. The photo showed Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky giving a speech in Copenhagen.

The photo is a little blurry and Trotsky’s hand is in front of his face. But there is an undeniable energy in the shot — you can almost hear the dogmatic and impassioned Marxist on stage.

Capa really made his name a few years later, in 1936. His photograph of a loyalist soldier during the Spanish civil war, falling after being shot, has become one of the most famous photos of the 20th century.

During World War II, Capa took pictures of the Allied landing in Normandy, and he took photos of the liberation of Paris.

After WWII, Capa hung out with and photographed famous and celebrated artists — Henri Matisse, John Steinbeck, Alfred Hitchcock.

There’s a photo from the summer of 1948 that Capa took, which shows an old man grinning as he holds a baby on the beach. It could be any old photo of any old grandpa with his grandson — except that old man is Pablo Picasso, and the grandson is actually Picasso’s son, Claude.

The point is this:

Capa made a point of going to out-of-the-way places, meeting important and influential people, being at the right spot at the right moment. Many of his photographs are not technically great or even very good. But they are inherently interesting — even today, almost a hundred years later — because of their content.

The past few days I’ve been promoting my Insight Exposed training. That training talks about the tools to capture snapshots, and the process for developing those snapshots into something valuable.

But what’s the content of those snapshots? If the content is plain, familiar, or uninteresting in itself, you will have to work hard to turn those snapshots into something interesting and insightful.

On the other hand, if you make a point of going to out-of-the-way places, meeting important and influential people, being at the right spot at the right moment, you won’t have to be technically great or even very good. Your work will be inherently interesting because of the content. So I talk all about that in the final section of Insight Exposed.

Insight Exposed is an offer I am only making available for people who are signed up to my email list. If you’d like to get Insight Exposed or you’d like to get on my email list, then click here and fill out the form that appears.

Three money stories from the second Insights & More book

by

Here’s three quick stories about a boy:

AGE 9: ​​Boy and his brother shine shoes to make money. They’re supposed to bring $2 back home to help feed the rest of the family.

Brother loses the $2 on the way home. Mother is about to start sobbing.

​​Boy thinks and has an idea. He and his brother take their last nickel and go and buy a flower at a flower shop. They sell it on the street for a dime. They go back to the flower shop and buy two more flowers. They sell those.

Soon they’re back home with $2. Mother joyous.

AGE 14: ​​Boy’s family moves to New York City. They can’t pay rent in their slum apartment.

It’s Christmas. The boy has a messenger job. He thinks again for a moment. He then writes out a neat and rhyming little message and puts it on his hat. The message invites passersby to drop a quarter in the hat in the spirit of Christmas.

Boy comes home at the end of the day and tells his mother to shake him. She does. Quarters start falling out everywhere, from his pockets, his hair, behinds his ears. Rent paid.

AGE 16: ​​Boy needs a job. He sees a sign on the street advertising a job, and a line of people waiting at the sign.

Boy walks up to the front of the line, picks up the sign. He kindly and professionally informs the waiting applicants that the job has been filled, and thanks them for coming.

Later, when the doors to the building open, he walks in, and is immediately hired, as the only applicant.

The point of all these stories is to show you how easy it is to make money.

“Yeah but it’s not always like that,” you might say. “Those are cherry-picked stories.”

Maybe so. The fact is, the boy in the stories above did not start a flower-reselling empire. Perhaps it was a lucky one-time thing.

​​Or perhaps, outside of that moment of need, which broke down his usual barriers and spurred him to innovation and action, he always had some mental block to keep him back.

It’s something I’ve often thought about, and not just in connection to making money.

Anyways, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the boy in the three stories above. He’s still famous today, even though, as you can guess by the dollar amounts, these stories happened a long time ago.

If you know who he is, well, good for you.

And if you don’t know, but would like to know, you can find out by joining my Insights & More Book Club. Because these three stories came from the second book-club book, which I started reading two nights ago.

The Insights & More Book Club is only open to people who are signed up to my email newsletter. So in case you’d like to join, either now or in the future, sign up to my newsletter here.

Creativity for sticky, literal-minded, non-creative types like me

by

I remember a negotiation I once had with a business owner, Mr. M. We were discussing a host-parasite relationship.

Mr. M organized conferences and masterminds composed of other business owners in his industry.

I provided a service that was of interest to those business owners — sales letter copy.

Mr. M offered to repeatedly refer people in his sphere of influence to me — for a 10% fee of what I made from his referrals.

“It’s a good deal,” he shrugged. “You wouldn’t ever have to hunt for new clients or negotiate fees. I know you must hate that since you’re a creative type.”

I just kept quiet. The fact is, I never minded hunting for clients or negotiating fees. And the other fact is, I’m far from a creative type. But why argue?

You might think it’s false modesty when I say I’m far from a creative type. After all, I write this newsletter, and I’ve done it every day for the past four years. Fine. Let me give you a snapshot from last night to illustrate:

Last night, I went to my Spanish class. We had a task to write a “Wanted” ad for our ideal roommate.

After a few minutes of creative idea generation, we went around the room sharing what we had come up with. Everybody had fun and surprising roommate criteria. I want a roommate who…

“Won’t organize parties without inviting me!”

“Knows how to cook food from around the world and is willing to share!”

“Is the same height as me so I can wear her clothes!”

My turn came. I looked down at my notes. “I want a roommate who can pay the bills.”

This isn’t about Spanish knowledge. It’s an example of something I’ve notice about myself over and over.

I’m extremely literal. My mind is sticky. It often jumps to the most immediate association and refuses to budge from there.

I’m telling you all this to maybe get you to budge.

I’ve repeatedly been told that what I write is creative, unique, surprising. And maybe it is. It’s certainly made good money for both my clients and for myself. Some of what I’ve written has even stood the test of time – if by time you are willing to accept months and years, instead of decades and centuries.

So here’s my bit of advice to get you to budge:

The secret is to recognize how your brain operates, and to work with it.

Business coach Rich Schefren likes to say, “Don’t put self-growth goals before business goals.” Meaning, don’t wait until you fix your laziness, procrastination, lack of money-motivation, fear of managing employees, flakiness, or distaste at self-promotion.

You will never fix those things, or it will take decades. If you want to start a business, start one now, and figure out how to make that business work in spite of all your faults.

Same thing with creative work. If you want to make a living off your ideas, insights, or just plain content, figure out a system that works with your brain. A system that allows you to consistently come up with creative, unique, surprising stuff, in spite of your natural literalness and mental stickiness.

I figured out a system that works for me. I will be describing it in my upcoming Insight Exposed training. If you like, you can get that training when it’s out, and it might give you one or two or three good ideas that allow you to be more creative, more consistently.

Insight Exposed is not released yet, but I will release it before the end of this month. So it makes sense to start seeding the idea in your head now.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking to create, start now. Write something.

And if you want a constraint, one that helps you be more creative instead of hindering you, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

If this email makes me any money, I still won’t really get it

by

I read a story a while back about a man named John Clauser.

Clauser studied physics but he struggled with it. That resonated with me, not because I studied physics, but because I studied math, and I struggled with that.

Anyways, Clauser had to take a grad-level course in quantum mechanics.

He failed. Twice. Eventually he managed to pass but he never really “got” it.

Some time later, Clauser decided to design an experiment to disprove quantum mechanics. His advisors told him not to do it. Clauser insisted. Maybe his ego was on the line.

Clauser carried out his experiment, which was meant to falsify a key prediction of quantum mechanics. Instead, to his disappointment, Clauser demonstrated quantum entanglement, just as the theory predicted.

Last year, Clauser won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work. He said, “I confess even to this day that I still don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

In his book Breakthrough Advertising, Gene Schwartz compared copywriters to atomic scientists. Gene argued that both copywriters and atomic scientists work with primal forces of nature. They cannot create those forces, but they can harness them and use them.

I’d like to extend Gene’s analogy. It’s not just that we can’t create those primal forces. We can’t even understand them, not really, not using our everyday human intuition.

Nobel-winning physicists still don’t understand quantum mechanics. ​​A-list copywriters still don’t understand human desire multiplied.

A few decades into his career, Gary Halbert put a lot of money into a weight loss product with a great proof element — a high school student who lost almost 600 lbs. “Without hunger! Without pills! Without low energy! Without giving up good food!”

Gary flew down to interview and record the guy. He created the product. He wrote and ran the ads. He put in dramatic before-and-after pictures and a money-back guarantee.

The ads bombed.

Nobody wanted this thing. Why? Nobody knows. You would think that a weight loss offer with a strong proof element and copy written by Gary Halbert would be a sure shot.

As screenwriter William Goldman once said — about those other people who cater to human desire, the Hollywood crowd — “Nobody knows anything.”

My point is not to depress you, by the way. Gary Halbert made millions of dollars and lived in Key West and fished all day long. William Goldman won a couple of Oscars. John Clauser got his Nobel prize. All that, in spite of not understanding how the damn thing works on a basic level.

The key of course is to keep generating ideas, to keep working, to keep taking a new step every day. And the day after, and so on until you drop dead. Great things can get accomplished in this way, and small things, and everything in between.

All right. I hope I haven’t inspired you too much.

I now have my Most Valuable Email training to pitch to you. I doubt you will be interested. You have probably heard me talk about this training before, and you have probably decided already it’s not for you.

That’s fine. But in case you want to find out more about Most Valuable Email, and how it can help you keep writing a new valuable email each day — and maybe even make money with it, God knows how — then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The secret spider web of money and love opportunities

by

This morning, I woke up, stood up, blinked, stumbled to the living room, and reached, addict-like, for my laptop. I checked my email. The first email started with,

===

Hi John!

Thanks for all your patience.

Now, let’s get you paid.

===

That’s for some work I did at the end of last year. The money is finally arriving. Today of all days.

I say today of all days because today and the past few days, since the start of this month, strange things have been happening.

I made more no-deadline sales of my Most Valuable Email and Copy Riddles programs than I had since I created these offers.

I’ve had a surprising number of people replying to my emails with interesting comments.

I’ve had a new surge of email subscribers.

I’ve also spent more money on new courses and trainings than I had in the past two years’ total.

And all this has been happening while I’ve been keeping most of my attention on another project I have been working on, which I believe has the potential to be much bigger than this Bejakovic newsletter, and which I am looking at as real business, unlike this Bejakovic newsletter, which was and remains primarily a daily way to feed my curiosity and need for novelty and some kind of creative work.

You might wonder why I’m telling you this, or why you might possibly care.

A while ago, I wrote how I believe there’s a secret spider web. This spider web connects copywriting clients. There’s another spider web for money-making opportunities. There’s even one for women in your life, if women are what interests you.

And here’s what I’ve found, over and over in my life:

Once you start jumping up and down on one corner of that web, no matter how remote, it gets the attention of the other spiders, I mean clients, I mean women, or business partners, or customers, or people who owe you money. And if you keep jumping up and down, they will seek you out. Sooner or later.

It’s true the other way around also.

If things are not going as you like in your life, if nobody is seeking you out, if no pleasant coincidences are happening to you regularly, there’s a good chance that the spider web has grown silent and still.

You might think I’m just telling you to take action. In different ways. And to keep taking action, even if the action seems futile.

And yes, action is how you jump up and down the spider web, and how you set it vibrating.

But if you ask me, there’s value in having a story to tell yourself, or an image to keep in your head, or an analogy that you can believe in.

For me, I’ve found the image of jumping up and down spider web works much better than the rough command, “keep taking action.”

Maybe this image will work better for you as well.

And who knows. Maybe there really is a secret spider web, and maybe you really can make it vibrate.

And now, it’s time for me to do some jumping myself.

So if you’d like to spend some money as a way of getting your spider web vibrating, then take a look at my Copy Riddles program.

I’ve put a lot of work into this program, and I’m proud of what I’ve been able to create.

At the most basic level, Copy Riddles is about writing sexy sales bullets. But beyond that, Copy Riddles is really about the fundamentals of sales copywriting. But beyond that, Copy Riddles is really about the essence of effective communication, whether in a sales context or not.

Maybe those are grandiose claims. So let me bring it down to earth, and share what copywriter Liza Schermann wrote me after going through Copy Riddles:

===

The entire course is an a-ha moment. Because you see these things from other copywriters or you read other copy, but you don’t see what’s behind it or why it’s working. Your course shows what happens behind the scenes. Why is this working… and why is this working in this specific case… and why it wouldn’t maybe work in another case.

===

If you’d like to find out more or buy Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The mystery of taking a 4-foot dive

by

The summer before last, I met up with some friends on the Croatian island of Krk, in the town of Baska, where I spent much of my childhood.

One day, with one of those friends — a jolly, bear-like guy — I went to a little beach at the edge of town.

The beach is a rocky lagoon with a small stone pier at one end. If you stand on the pier, you are four feet above the water. Some parts of the sea around the pier are shallow, but other parts are deep, 10-12 feet.

I grew up coming to this beach and so I immediately went up to the pier and dived into the water where it’s safe.

My friend stood on the pier, looking at me, ready to jump in as well.

Then he looked down at the water. “Is it deep enough to jump in here?” he yelled to me.

“Yep, you’re fine.”

My friend took a few steps back on the pier to get a running start. He started, neared the edge of the pier, and stopped.

He smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders.

“Come on,” I yelled at him, “jump in!”

He tried again. Same thing — he ran to the edge, stopped, and peered down at the water below.

I got out of the water, jumped in several more times.

​​My friend stood there, nearing the edge, peering over, getting ready to jump in. Each time, he stopped short. Then the entire process would begin again.

I got dry in the meantime. I sat in the sunshine making fun of my friend. I gave him encouragement and coaching and advice.

Nope.

People on the little rocky beach started noticing. At first, they were sneaking a peek out of the corners of their eyes. Then they started watching the spectacle full-on and pointing out the miserable non-jumper to their friends and family.

Will he do it? won’t he?

I’m telling you this because yesterday, I got a question from a member of my Copy Riddles program, who is taking advantage of the Copy Oracle privilege. He wrote:

===

Your best advice for positioning or justifying starting a list when in the beginning you’re not a bonafide xpert yet on a particular subject without being a Bullshit Artist, Pretender or just a F.. Liar would be what?

The connection to bullets is I have studied Copywriting and Marketing for years because of the Sales Value they have. But have finally seen the light as to how powerful written direct response is and the leverage it offers or can offer when done correctly.

But its obvious it takes a list to take full advantage.

Mentally Positioning it to yourself as to why the hell should anyone get on the list in the beginning is a Bitch. ( at least to me it is )

===

The justification for starting your own list are the same as with any other valuable project. You do it because the long-term benefit is great, and there’s no way to get there without taking the first step.

But that’s like saying the justification for taking a 4-foot dive into the sea is that it’s fun and refreshing.

​​That’s obvious.

​​But still my friend stood there, approaching the edge of the pier a hundred times, each time stopping himself right at the edge.

Eventually, after half an hour, in spite of a hundred short stops, it happened.

My friend went over to the edge of the pier. He looked down at the water. He reassured himself that the water was deep enough.

He took a few steps back, got a running start. He ran to the edge, leaped into the empty air, and splashed down into the water.

He emerged a second later, perfectly fine and even triumphant.

A huge wave of relief passed over the audience on the beach. Well-meaning families of Czechs and Hungarians had become exhausted by my friend’s indecisiveness. Now they could finally relax. A few of them even clapped.

What made my friend jump in? What makes anybody jump in?

​​It’s a truly mysterious question.

Some people can do it right away. Some people never do it. Some approach the edge a hundred times, and then, in spite of all the previous hesitation and inhibition, they finally leap in.

What makes the difference? And how can you achieve that difference, if you have been hesitating a hundred times?

I have no idea. And nobody else does either. I believe that if anybody truly had a method to force that to happen, he could set himself up as the founder of a new religion that would sweep the world and win billions of converts in five years.

But such a messiah has not yet appeared. And so we’re left with indecision and agonizing and will-he-won’t-he, even when the benefits are clear.

Now let me stop philosophizing and point you to my Most Valuable Email course. It’s meant for people who write about topics like I write about — marketing and influence and writing.

If you’ve already started a list, then my MVE course can help you entertain and engage your readers, while making you a better marketer and writer in the process.

On the other hand, if you do not yet have a list, then it’s a mystery.

Maybe the story I told you above was inspiring. And so you get a running start and you near the edge of the pier and… nothing. Yet again.

Or maybe today will be different for some reason. And you will actually start your list, and you will start writing to it regularly.

If today truly is different, then I suggest getting my Most Valuable Email course, because it can help you get authority and credibility even if you’re entirely new.

Either way:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Who today remembers Ragged Dick?

by

I was very grateful to find out the following fact just now:

Today being January 13, it is the birthday of Horatio Alger, one of the most popular and influential American writers of all time.

Starting with Ragged Dick in 1868, Alger published almost a hundred novels. They were all exactly the same — but readers didn’t mind.

Each of Alger’s novels starred a poor and luckless boy, who managed to stay afloat through honesty, hard work, and perseverance.

Eventually, following a noble act, the boy would be brought to the attention of a wealthy patron. The patron gave the boy his lucky break, setting him on the path to success and security.

It was good story for 19th-century America. That’s why it could be told over and over again.

Today, of course, nobody remembers Ragged Dick. Nobody reads Horatio Alger any more.

It takes somebody like me, an email columnist a little desperate for a daily email topic, to even bring up the fact that today is Alger’s birthday, and to tell you something interesting about the man. Such as the following haiku:

Rags-to-riches theme,
Urban tales of working class,
Alger’s legacy.

In case you are wondering what I’m getting at, I’ll admit that Alger’s story makes me think of the mysterious question of fame, and who gets it and who gets to keep it for more than a few years.

Alger sold some 20 million copies of his books in his time. But just a few years after his death, surveys showed that few kids had ever heard of him.

But — and maybe I am naive, and maybe I have bought into the Horatio Alger myth too much — I feel that today is a moment of opportunity as good as 19th-century America. Maybe better. And Alger’s stories, outdated as they are, remain emotionally relevant.

Ragged Dick was a bootblack.

If Dick lived today, I imagine he would join the creator economy, and maybe start a free email newsletter. Through honesty, hard work, and perseverance, he would toil away on his newsletter until he got his lucky break, which would set him on the path to success and security.

Maybe you don’t buy into my Ragged Dick daydream. And maybe this entire email isn’t relevant to you.

But if by chance you are starting a free email newsletter, or in case you’ve already got one, then you might want to know about my Most Valuable Email.

For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Free quiz: See if you should give up on that dream

by

A while back, I came across an insightful analogy by a guy named Jeremy Enns. I don’t know Enns from Adam’s off ox, but the man seems to run a successful marketing agency.

Anyways, Enns had this to say (I’ve cherrypicked the most insightful bits):

===

Podcasting Is Like Investing

I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside and talk with dozens of podcasters about how their shows have grown and when the effort finally started to feel like it was worth it.

The most common response is that it took at least two years before the investment really started to pay dividends.

I like to say that you can podcast for a year and it will feel like a massive waste of time. Podcast for three years and it can completely change your life.

===

This ties into a little quiz I devised last year, while writing my never-released Copy Zone project, about the business side of copywriting.

The quiz is a way to decide if any dream project is worth embarking on.

The quiz is simply this. Ask yourself:

“Would I be ok working on this for the next five years?”

If your answer is, “No way!” or “Really, I want to do this for a year or max two and get out,” then quit now.

And when you do quit, send me a thank-you note for saving you months or maybe years of your life, dabbling on the sidelines, and possibly wasting thousands of dollars on books and courses and seminars. Because the fact is, this project, dreamy though it sounds, is just not for you.

And if by chance your dream project involves an email newsletter, take my little quiz above.

If you find yourself thinking, “I’m willing to write this newsletter for the next year so I can then move on to something else,” then you know what to do. Don’t even get started.

But if your answer is a grudging but honest yes — yes, you’d be willing to work on this for the next five years — then I can tell you that:

1. After one year of writing the newsletter you’re reading right now, I had nothing to show for it — at least nothing in the way of money or recognition or red panties being thrown my way

2. After two years, this newsletter started to pay dividends

3. After three years, and and now moving on to four and more, it has completely changed my life

If you are willing to stick with it for the long term, then it makes sense to start. Even today.

Now for my pitch:

If you want to discover the one type of email I would write every day if I had to — the one I would choose above stories, or personal reveals, or how-to, or pop culture illustrations, or shock and controversy — then you can find that in a little course I’ve called Most Valuable Email.

For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/