Motivation

The first time I tried it, I didn’t last very long

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Dan Kennedy has a joke that goes something like, if we all stopped doing a thing in case the first time didn’t work out well, the human race would soon die out.

Get it? Get it? Wink wink, nudge nudge?

It’s about sex.

I bring this up for two reasons:

Reason one is that the first time I tried it — meaning writing emails, get your mind out of literotica section please — it didn’t work out well. Or actually I just didn’t last very long.

I believe this current newsletter, which has been running for 6+ years day in and day out, is something like my third or fourth attempt to stick to emailing consistently.

Reason two is because I want to share with you a case study I got from a reader named Jakub Červenka.

Jakub runs an online business called Muž 2.0. From what Google tells me, that translates from Czech into into Man 2.0. Because Jakub’s business is teaching men self-development stuff, specifically how to fix various bedroom problems.

Now, I happen to know from having exchanged lots of emails with Jakub over the years that his main thing is running ads on Facebook to a webinar that sells his core program.

But lately, Jakub gave another shot to daily emailing, even though it didn’t work out well the first time around. Jakub reports:

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I had been sending emails daily and then stopped for a good part of this year mainly due to feeling burnt out and feeling like I was riding on a dead horse, writing emails about the same topic.

With your service, this block is gone. I like to see the puzzle and then read in your email how you personally used it. It’s great over-the-shoulder learning experience.

I also noticed how not wanting to break the streak is motivating me – even more so than I don’t know, say making potentially money from making a sale to my list… that’s crazy. I am ashamed to admit it, as it is completely irrational, but it’s the truth. And probably not so surprising to anyone in the copywriting world, we know we are not rational beings, but still, this surprised me.

Also, I used a few of your prompts in my Black Friday promo. I made crazy good offer to my list, (20 of my flagship courses for 40% of the price) due to some messed up technical stuff ended up selling 23, which with some up/cross/down sells brought home close to $20k in 3 days… my best Black Friday yet.

So it was a good offer, but I was not promoting it in any other way than by e-mails and your inspiration was part of it, so you can say that your service contributed to this result. Which is true and it restored my resolve to write daily.

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The service Jakub is referring to is my Daily Email Habit. It makes it easier to come up with a daily email topic every day, plus it has an in-email streak counter to keep you accountable.

Like Jakub says, why the streak counter works is not particularly rational… but it can be very effective.

And the results?

Jakub already had a successful business, and he had all the pieces in place. Reintroducing daily emails helped him make another $20k last month that he might not have made otherwise.

Your particular situation? Only you can really answer that question.

One thing I’m sure of, if you’re planning to ever or restart daily emails, the sooner you do, the sooner you will see results. Yes, even if you tried it before and it felt like riding on a dead horse.

For more info on Daily Email Habit, and how it can help you start and stay consistent with daily emails:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

“DID IT MAKE SALES???”

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Yesterday, I sent an email with some sort of pulp fiction story, featuring a secret agent named Bond Jebakovic. Reactions were… mixed. Here’s one:

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This email went right above my head. The hook didn’t hook me and I found no place to enter back into the narrative while *gasp* skimming the rest.

I had no idea what you were yapping about…

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Some reviewers were more favorable though:

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This, my friend, is ridiculous. I applaud you! 😆

At first, I was completely befuddled reading your email. (Possibly because I was exhausted and grumpy after a long day.)

I came back and re-read this morning. The metaphor began to emerge… and of course, I clicked the link because. Curiosity.

I celebrate audacious self-expression (it feels like you had great fun writing this — did you?) and being yourself in business. This is work as play, and so delightful.

I don’t know how well it works as “marketing,” but maybe you’ll tell us later. (Hint, hint.)

I personally think it’s worth creating, just because you wanted to.

Thanks for being! 🥰

===

A few other people wanted that same question answered. “Did this work as marketing? DID IT MAKE SALES???”

As of writing right now, some 12 hours after yesterday’s email went out, I can say the email did make a few sales, three specifically.

Is that good? Bad? I can only tell you this:

In my experience, the sales for any given email are probably 20% due to actual copy in the email… 40% due to the list, meaning the relationship they have built up with you over time… and the remaining 40% due to the offer (is it exciting, is it new).

The offer in last night’s email was my new Daily Email Habit service.

I opened this offer up to my list 4 days ago, and I’ve been promoting it every day since via daily emails.

I’ve made sales with each email. A few dozen with the first one… and then, predictably, fewer sales with each following email, because there were fewer people on my list for whom this offer is new and exciting. (The ones who found it exciting and new probably already bought.)

But there’s a bigger point:

That is simply autonomy. Doing what you want, how you want, when you want, just because you want.

Autonomy is very important for me. Maybe it’s the same for you.

Like my reader above says, I had fun writing yesterday’s email. And, even though the email might have been unreadable to many, it was valuable to me, because of the idea at the core of the email, which I wanted to present in a dramatic fashion, and which might come back to me in the future in some new and profitable way.

But imagine if I had a full-time job, and imagine if I wrote something like I did yesterday. What kind of careless or indulgent boss would let it slide?

Or imagine if I were working for a client, and I decided to deliver yesterday’s email as copy for him to send out?

At best, I’d get pushback, and I’d have to do some convincing that this is really the best way to proceed.

At worst, I’d get yelled at and told to go read some HubSpot articles to learn how email marketing is really done.

If you’re in either of those situations — a full-time job, or clients — don’t get me wrong. I’m not ragging on you. There are lots of good reasons for both a job and for clients — money, security, experience.

Still, it’s nice to have something of your own as well, something where you can do as you like, something you can fall back on if the job or the clients ever go south.

Of course, autonomy is good for you. But it goes beyond just self-interest.

Autonomy frees up your mind and probably makes you better at your work for your employer or your clients, because you can be more relaxed and honest, since you know you have alternatives.

Autonomy allows you to create stuff you wouldn’t be able to create otherwise. Many times, that stuff won’t work. But sometimes it will, and the world will be a slightly better place for it.

And autonomy inspires others and gives them hope. At least I know I’ve been inspired in the past by seeing others living and working how they want — it’s what pushed me into working for myself, much more than the promise of becoming a billionaire.

All that’s to say… autonomy good. And daily emails, even if they don’t hook everybody every day, are my own little daily step towards autonomy.

Maybe they can be yours as well?

If you want my help with writing daily emails consistently, so you can build something for yourself, and not just for your clients or employer:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Not the kind of testimonial I want

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Last night, I opened up my Daily Email Habit service to my entire list.

Since then, over the past 12 hours, close to two dozen new people have signed up.

Many of those people have written me to say they are excited to get started and develop their skills.

Others, who didn’t sign up for good reasons of their own, wrote to tell me how they like the concept and design of the service.

And then, I got the following “testimonial” from a reader who neither signed up for Daily Email Habit, nor had a good reason for not signing up:

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What a brilliant idea!

This is truly an extremely valuable offer for someone who has any sort of expertise and has his/her offers nailed down to get into the habit of daily writing.

Sadly, I have none of the above 2 things at the moment. Once I do find my ICP for whom I have sufficient expertise, this will be something I’ll definitely come to you for.

Thank you for launching such an amazing offer!

===

I didn’t reply to this. I had a sense there’s a game afoot here that I don’t want to play.

I tried to figure out what game that is, and what’s really going on in the message above, in between that compliment sandwich.

I had to translate it to myself to understand. For some reason, I thought of a little olive, looking out at a large tract of land and saying:

“What beautiful, fertile soil! This land would be perfect to support a whole orchard of olive trees, given that they have deep roots and broad branches. But alas, as you can see, I have neither. Just look at me! Do you see any roots or branches on me? No, there are none. It’s quite sad. Beautiful land though.”

There are lots of good reasons not to write daily emails, but lack of expertise is not one of them. You don’t write consistently because you have expertise… you have expertise because you write consistently.

That’s something that I believe on a deep level, and that’s why I put it right on the sales page for Daily Email, at the very start of the deck copy, right after “I’ll help you start a consistent daily email habit that…”

Like I said, there are lots of good reasons why you might not want to write daily emails. There are also lots of good reasons why you might.

If you decide to write daily emails, you most certainly don’t need my Daily Email Habit service to do it. But my service might help you stick with it… be more consistent… save time… or write better emails than you would otherwise. For more info on all that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

My daily email counter goes back in the oven

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I remember one time as a kid, my mom made a cake. It took hours to mix the ingredients, and it took hours more to bake in the oven.

When the cake re-emerged from the oven, it was 10pm already. And something was off— I don’t remember what. Maybe the taste was off, or the appearance, or the consistency.

I do remember my mom sitting on the couch afterwards and muttering to herself about what could have gone wrong, and what she could do in round two to fix it.

She sat there and ruminated, and sat some more. Eventually, she stood up.

“I’m going to try it again,” she said.

By this time, it was probably 11pm. I just shrugged and went to bed.

I found out the next morning that my mom finished round two of the cake at 2am. This time, it turned out exactly how she wanted.

And it was delicious.

This made a deep impression on young Bejako.

At the time, my childish attitude was, “Try, and if at first you don’t succeed, clearly this is not meant to happen, at least not today.”

Well, actually, that’s still my attitude today, though with the years, I’ve also learned some persistence.

One week ago, last Monday to be exact, I released my Daily Email Habit service to the priority list.

Daily Email Habit is at core a daily prompt to get you over the initial hurdle of what to write about each day in a daily email. The prompt is the core of Daily Email Habit, but I also have some extra bits to make the experience more engaging and fun.

One of these is a streak counter at the bottom of each email that shows you how many straight days you’ve been sending a daily email. You update the counter by pressing a button in each Daily Email Habit email, and you have 24 hours to do so — otherwise the counter resets to 0.

It took a surprising amount of backend tomfoolery and jerry-rigging to make this simple counter. (Email is not a very sophisticated technical platform.)

Of course, the counter seemed to be working fine when I released Daily Email Habit last Monday… but by Tuesday I already had a bunch of emails from people saying their streaks were all wrong.

So I went in, debugged, updated the database by hand. Problem confidently solved.

The streak counter has been running smoothly ever since… until this morning, when I got a message from a Daily Email Habit subscriber:

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Hey John,

My streak reset for some reason…

even though I put YES for everything

writing to you at 10:57 EST (I made the time limit)

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… and beneath this was a screenshot of all the daily emails this subscriber has sent to his list over the past week, to back up his claim.

What to do?

The usual. Go to the couch, sit, mutter to myself about what could have gone wrong, and what I can do in round two to fix it. And then get to work, even if it’s getting late in the day.

One thing is for sure. I won’t let this stupid email counter get the better of me.

By the way, I am planning to have an official launch for Daily Email Habit at some date in the future. But before that happens, I want to create a launch bonus, equivalent in value to what I’m charging monthly for Daily Email Habit, and this is taking time. Honestly, I don’t know how long it will take.

But if you think that writing a daily email consistently could be valuable to you, and if you’re interested in seeing if Daily Email habit could help you get there, then hit reply and tell me why this service sounds interesting to you.

Do this, and I’ll get you the details all about how Daily Email Habit works so you can decide if it’s for you or not. Plus, if you do join now, you will still get any bonuses I offer when I have the official launch, per my usual protocol of rewarding early buyers.

Why I’ve been turning away doubting subscribers

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Over the past few days, I launched my Daily Email Habit service to people who raised their hand to get on the priority list. At the end of the sales page, rather than linking to an order form, I asked people to write me to say if they are in, out, or have any questions. Most people who wrote me said they are in, like these folks:

#1. “Yes, I am in!”

#2. “No questions, I’m in!”

#3. “This looks brilliant John, I’m in. Thank you for coming up with such an exciting service!”

#4. “Count me in, please! Looking forward to it…”

#5. “I am IN. Please send me the link to join.”

#6. “Wtf dude you are such a badass. Yes I’m in.”

#7. “Yes absolutely im in. This sounds like an awesome idea”

… but some people had questions. Here’s one that came up a few times:

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I took a loooong look (plus a night to sit on it), and I want to try it out.

But I’m going to be honest with you:

I’m still debating whether I need prompts like this or random insightful articles to expand my thinking.

(for example, the recent one you shared from Sean got the creative juice flowing)

This means I can’t promise I’m in for the long term yet. I understand that the concept of any subscription is to lower the entry cost in exchange for longer loyalty (like Daniel’s AiC newsletter).

So, if this “test the water mindset” bothers you, I’m okay with putting this one off for now, too.

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Each time I got this particular question, I’ve been telling people NOT to sign up. Why?

I read once of a study in which people evaluated the attractiveness of a core offer (a bunch of saucers and cups and plates) + a free bonus bundle (more saucers and cups and plates, some in good shape and others a little chipped).

The conclusion of the study was that people evaluated the core offer as more valuable if it were sold on its own, with no free bonuses (perceived value: $33)… than if it were sold with the free bonuses, some of which were good and some of which were chipped (perceived value: $23).

I’m not saying that people who are not sure if they want my Daily Email Habit are “chipped saucers.” I’ve known a few of them for a while, and I know they are good people. Plus, I appreciate their honesty in voicing their doubts.

I just mean to tell you a kind of psychology quirk. The human brain tends to evaluate sets of items by using the AVG function, rather than the SUM function.

That includes my own brain. Yes, maybe it’s not very smart. But the fact is:

1. I don’t need the money from an extra subscriber.

2. I particularly don’t need the money if that subscriber won’t be getting anything out of it. (I can’t say for sure that anybody who expresses doubts on signing up will not get value out of it, but to my mind, the odds jump up dramatically.)

3. There’s an impact on my will to work and my long-term sticktoitiveness if I feel that what I’m doing has some sort of meaning vs. if it’s meaningless.

Maybe that makes perfect sense to you.

Or maybe it makes you a little uncomfortable. After all, aren’t we in business? Isn’t the goal to make money? When and how do you decide to turn away good, hard money today because of something vague like “will to work and long-term sticktoitiveness” tomorrow?

All that, and more, is something I tried to address in my Most Valuable Postcard #1.

Most Valuable Postcard was my short-lived paid newsletter, some two years ago.

And Most Valuable Postcard #1 was about the most important and valuable topic I could find — the most important thing to focus on in your business, whether you sell products or your own services, according to the most successful direct marketers in history.

If you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp1/

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.

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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.

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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.

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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/