Motivation

I failed in my quest for the gift of the gab

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Yesterday I tried to win the gift of the gab. I didn’t manage it.

What surprised me was that I found I had really hoped for it. I was almost desperate to get it.

Background:

I’ve been vacationing in Ireland for a week. Yesterday was the last full day. It was supposed to be the climax — going to Blarney Castle outside Cork, to kiss the Blarney Stone.

Legend says that anyone who kisses the stone will be blessed with the “gift of the gab” — the skill of talk, palaver, flattery, “the ability to deceive without offending.”

But the kissing didn’t happen for me. The line to kiss the stone was impossibly long, down the stairs, out the castle, into the gardens.

My friend Sam and I had spent too much time idling around the Blarney Castle grounds, inspecting and enjoying the fern garden, the bee observatory, the lake with the gold treasure at the bottom of it, the horse paddock with no horses, the impressive botanical garden, the wish-granting magic stairs.

What a waste of time.

Because the line for the actual castle was building up in the meantime, putting a bigger and bigger barrier between me and the gift of the gab.

My point:

We all want something external, outside ourselves, a talisman, a magic spell, a divine approval, something to believe in as cause and guarantee for our success, and as a motivator to action.

Regarding my failed quest for the gift of the gab:

The last time I was in Ireland, 10+ years ago, was because I was competing at the European University Debate Championships, even though I had only taken up debating months earlier.

In the decade since, I met two of my long-term girlfriends — relationships that lasted multiple years — when I ran up to an unfamiliar girl on the street and started gabbin’ away.

And today, I have this gabbin’ email newsletter, which is read regularly by some thousands of people, and which provides me everything I ever wanted in life, at least as far as business goes.

Meaning, I shouldn’t really be desperate for a magic stone to grant me the ability to chat, chatter, and use words to connect with people.

And yet, yesterday I found myself scheming to get back to Cork at the very next opportunity, book a hotel near the Blarney Castle, and be the first person in line in the morning to kiss the stone and get that magic gift of the gab.

So I’m writing this email to tell myself as much as to tell you that power and responsibility aren’t in the Blarney Stone or really anywhere else you need to travel to. As Tolstoy wrote, the Kingdom of God is within you.

It can be valuable to remember that.

On the flip side, there’s no denying that something external to believe in will sell, and will sell big. It’s the allure of a new mechanism, as copywriters like to call it.

But let’s get off the ethereal plane and descend to a more mercenary plane:

Specifically, the plane of my Most Valuable Email course.

I’ve made sure that course contains a mysterious and magical mechanism, the “Most Valuable Email trick.” It’s a big part of the reason why many people have bought this course.

But as I make clear on the MVE sales page, what’s really most valuable is the process of applying this Most Valuable Email trick to yourself, which makes you a better marketer and copywriter every day, and which as a side-effect produces interesting and influential and even sellable content.

Or in the words of Spanish A-list copywriter Rafa Casas, who bought MVE right when I put it out:

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Thanks for the course. It’s true that it can be read in an hour, but it needs more resting time and practice to get the full potential out of it. Which is a lot.

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So if you want to develop and nurture and even cherish the gift of the gab that’s already in you, and learn to sell daily without offending, here’s the full info on Most Valuable Email:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

How to write emails that won’t embarrass you and show off your lack of skill

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Last week, I got an email from a marketer with a big-promise subject line:

“How to hook your reader in 5 seconds…”

Oh, the ironing. It took me all about 1 second to swipe left and get rid of that email without ever opening it.

Clearly, whatever techniques that guy was selling inside his email, they weren’t helping him personally.

That would never happen had he known about my Most Valuable Email trick, which is all about preventing ugly and embarrassing situations like the above from happening.

I last promoted Most Valuable Email 10 days ago. Due to the phase of the moon, I pulled in a surprising number of new buyers then. One was email marketer Illya Shapovalov, who wrote me soon after buying to say:

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Oh. My God.

After slightly more than 2 hours, I still haven’t gone fully through MVE. I’m a tedious notetaker. My head is literally spinning. I feel like Ned Stark (assuming you’ve watched GOT) when he pieced together that the “Baratheon” kids are bastards. I’m gonna take a break and continue where I left off (the riddles)

Even though I’m fairly new to copywriting (7 months in), I’ve been gnawing at this idea of “telling without telling”. For example, how to not have a lead magnet, but make so everyone who lands on the signup form can’t help but join. Basically “show don’t tell”. Because. as you point out in MVE too, stories are getting commoditized. Everyone can spin a story. This however … this answers so many seemingly unanswerable questions I had, or didn’t even know I have.

Easily the best $100 I ever invested in something. This is something I can apply not only to email but to my website copy, to my LinkedIn profile/posts, to name a few examples …

Bottom line: Huge thank you for making this course – and for seriously underpricing it. In hindsight, it’s worth way more than a measly $100. And I haven’t even checked the swipe file yet.

P.S. Yesterday’s email looks completely different – in fact, it did so right after your response. That, and the whole MVE trick … something so pointedly simple, yet so fucking powerful.

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The MVE trick takes less than an hour to learn. (Or more than two hours, depending on how many notes you take.) Point being, it’s quick to grasp.

You can then apply the MVE trick in your subject lines, in your email copy, in your personal positioning, in the way you price your offers, in your funnels, as I’ve done, over and over, a dozen times or more in my emails just this month, and many more times over the past months and years.

Each time I have applied the MVE trick, I have profited, either with sales that I made directly, or indirectly, by learning, and becoming better at what I do, every day, a small but significant step each time.

If you’d like to do the same:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Mysteries of the mind

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Yesterday I started listening to a four-and-a-half hour long presentation titled, Best Life Ever. I did it because the guy speaking, Jim Rohn, has been billed, by no less an authority than genius marketer and influence expert Dan Kennedy, as being a master storyteller.

Dan says that Jim Rohn built his long and very successful career on zero practical content, great stories only.

So that’s what I expected to find. Fantastic fluff. Zero real substance.

And yet I was surprised. In the first twenty minutes, I already found the content genuinely insightful. I felt that Dan was underselling it. Take for example the following. With a smile, Rohn says:

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The day the Christian Church was started, a magnificent sermon was preached. A great presentation. And if you’re a student at all of good communication, it was one of the classic presentations of all time.

And this sermon, this presentation, was given to a multitude. Meaning a lot of people. But it was interesting.

The record says, when the sermon was finished, there was a variety of reaction to the same sermon. Isn’t that fascinating? I find that fascinating.

It said some that heard this presentation were perplexed.

Now I read the presentation. It sounded pretty straightforward to me. Why would somebody be perplexed with a good, sincere, straightforward presentation?

Best answer I’ve got: They are the perplexed. What other explanation is there? It doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

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Rohn’s point is that there are some mysteries of the mind.

Why are some people inspired to take action? Why do others never take action? Why are some people perplexed? Why do others mock and laugh?

You can try to figure it out. So did Rohn, once upon a time.

“I don’t do that any more,” he says in his talk. “I’ve got peace of mind now. I can sleep like a baby. Not trying to straighten any of this out any more.” It’s just mysteries of the mind.

Did you find that insightful?

I did. But maybe I’m just very easy to dupe into feeling like I’ve had an epiphany. Doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

Or who knows. Maybe Rohn is such a good storytellers that even in those first 20 minutes, he managed to prime me for being easily influenced.

In case you’re a student at all of good communication, this guy was one of the classic presenters of all time. To see why, watch a few minutes of the following:

 

“The one thing all my mentors have in common”

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This past Sunday, Novak Djokovic won the French Open and his 23 Grand Slam title — a big deal in the tennis world.

​​On Monday, in an off moment, I decided to check if there were any interesting news or interviews with Djokovic following the French Open.

I automatically headed to the r/tennis subreddit on Reddit. But in place of the usual page with tennis links and videos, I was hit with a blank page and the following notice:

“r/tennis is joining the Reddit blackout from June 12th to 14th, to protest the planned API changes that will kill 3rd party apps”

Perhaps you’ve heard:

Reddit the company, which is basically thousands of different news boards, is experiencing a kind of strike. Special Reddit users — mods — who control the different news boards are protesting Reddit’s proposed policy changes. As a result, they’ve basically made the site unusable for hundreds of millions of users.

I haven’t been following the drama. But apparently, as of yesterday, Reddit’s CEO said he plans to go ahead with the policy changes. To which many mods decided to extend the strike from 2-3 days, as originally planned, to indefinite.

All this reminded me of email conversation I recently had with Glenn Osborn.
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​Glenn is a curious creature. Once upon a time, Glenn attended 15 of Jay Abraham’s $15k marketing seminars by bartering his way in.

​​He also went to one of Gary Halbert’s copywriting seminars in Key West, and watched Gary go up on stage with that “Clients Suck” hat.

​​These days, Glenn writes an email newsletter called “Billionaire Idea Testing Club” about influence tricks he spots from people like Taylor Swift and James Patterson and J.K. Rowling.

For reasons of his own, Glenn likes to reply to my emails on occasion and send me valuable ideas. A few weeks ago, Glenn wrote me with some things he had learned directly and indirectly from Clayton Makepeace and Gary Halbert and Jay Abraham.

​​Good stuff. But then, in a PS, Glenn added the following:

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P.S. -For Consulting Clients I Do ALL THE Work F-O-R them – MYSELF and thru staffers.

CONTROL is the one thing all my Mentors Have in Common. If You Don’t CONTROL what you do You Cannot Make Munny.

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That last idea definitely stood out to me.

There are so many ways to be successful in any field. And contradicting strategies will often produce equally good results.

But a very few things are non-negotiable. You could call those the rules of the system. Perhaps CONTROL is one of them.

At this point I would normally refer you to Glenn’s newsletter in case you want to read it yourself. ​​But as Glenn himself says, “My ARCHIVE Is By-Referral-Only – Too ADVANCED to Toss Strangers into.”

If you are determined, then a bit of Googling, based on what I’ve told you above, will lead you to Glenn’s optin page and his unusual but valuable newsletter.

And in case you yourself want to want to write an unusual but valuable newsletter, the following can help:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

My #1 takeaway from a $3k conference

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I went to a $3k copywriting conference 4 weeks ago. Since then, my impressions have settled.

What’s left? What ideas did I really get from the high-powered speakers at this conference?

What’s left today is the same as what struck me while I was still sitting in the freezing-cold conference room.

All the speakers kept repeating the word “simple.” Simple business model. Simple deliverables. Simple promises.

But here’s what I realized while listening to all these speakers:

Getting to simple isn’t simple. It takes time and thought and work to figure out what’s essential. It takes discipline and more work to eliminate what’s not essential. And there’s layers to it, so once you’ve made things simple once, you will probably realize that it’s still not really there, and there’s more that you can do.

Mark Ford wrote a post yesterday about how he loves to teach. And he wrote about physicist Richard Feynman, who believed that teaching is the best way to understand anything.

It’s easy to think you understand something, Feynman believed, until you try to explain it simply. And an audience gives you real feedback. Was it simple? Do they understand? Or are they lost?

If they’re lost, it’s because you lost them somewhere along the way.

Writing is a great way to make things simple. And writing to an audience is even better. Then tomorrow, you can do it all again, at a new level of understanding. Does that make sense? Write in and tell me, because it will help me figure things out also.

Kitten doesn’t blink, scientists not surprised

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Imagine the following:

Two scientists and a kitten. The scientists are wearing white lab coats. The kitten is not.

One of the scientists holds the kitten tight.

The other scientist asks, “You ready?”

The first scientist nods.

Scientist two takes a big swing and rushes his large man-hand towards the kitten’s face. He stops right before hitting the kitten.

The kitten doesn’t even blink.

The scientist stares hard at the kitten, then picks up a clipboard, and notes down the results. “Just as we thought,” he says.

The annals of science are filled with strange experiments designed to answer strange questions. Perhaps none is more strange than an experiment performed in 1963, by two cognitive scientists at MIT.

The experimenters took a bunch of newborn kittens. Put them in pairs. Kept them in total darkness. Only occasionally exposed them to light, under very specific conditions.

When it was time for the light, the scientists put a box around the kittens’ heads. This was so the beasts couldn’t see their paws.

One kitten, kitten A, then got to walk around freely.

The other kitten, kitten P, couldn’t control where it was walking. But thanks to a clever mechanism designed by these MIT scientists, kitten P was moved around the floor in a little basket in exactly the same way as kitten A was moving.

Result?

After 21 sessions of this bizarre treatment, all A kittens learned to control their paws properly, and to judge depth properly.

All P kittens on the other hand — well, you can guess. Bring a P kitten to the edge of a table, and the poor thing didn’t know to stretch its little kitten paws out. Take a swing at a little P kitten’s face, and it didn’t even know to blink.

The P kittens were Passive. The A kittens were Active.

The P kittens ended up Pathetic. The A kittens ended up Athletic.

There may be something in there that applies to humans also.

Read, study, observe what others are doing — you may learn something. Or you may not.

Practice, do, apply it yourself — and you are guaranteed to develop.

The choice is yours.

​​For specific opportunities to apply, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The next era for freelancers, full-time writers, and solo creators

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I woke up this morning, the sun shining into my eyes, an eager French bird chirping outside my window because it was almost 7am.

I groaned and realized it’s time to get up and get to work. In a few hours’ time, my friends, still asleep in various bedrooms around this cave-like Paris AirBnb, will wake up too. And by then, I will have to have this email finished.

I can tell you now, it won’t be easy.

I struggled during the night with a comforter that was too hot, a mosquito that wouldn’t shut up, and the effects of the first glass of alcohol I’ve had in months. The result is I’m tired this morning, and my brain is more foggy than usual.

“Let me read some stuff on the Internet,” I said. “Maybe that will help.” And lo — the email gods rewarded me with an article full of valuable and relevant ideas I can share with you today.

The article came from Simon Owens, somebody I’ve written about before in these emails. Owens is a journalist who covers the media landscape in his Substack newsletter.

Two interesting bits from Owens’s article:

1. The recent collapses of new media companies like Buzzfeed and Vox have left thousands of journalists, writers, and clickbait creators without a job. It’s not unlike the situation in the direct response space a few years ago, after Agora got into legal trouble and it put a chill on the whole industry.

2. The owners of media outlets and info businesses are realizing that freelancers just aren’t worth it. From Owens’s conversation with one such business owner: “Not only were they expensive to hire, but he also had to waste a lot of time editing their work so it met his quality standards.”

So if traditional employee-based companies that pump out content are failing… and if entrepreneurs are starting to realize that freelancers are a bum deal… where does that leave us?

You might say it leaves us with the creator economy — with all those unemployed journalists, writers, and clickbait creators going out and starting their own Substack or TikTok or OnlyFans.

​​Maybe so. But it’s harder to make that work than your Twitter feed might make you believe. From Owens’s article again:

“I’m on record as being an optimist about the future of the Creator Economy; I think we’re at the very early stages of an entrepreneurial media explosion. But at the same time, I’m a realist about how damn hard it is to launch and build a sustainable bootstrapped media business, especially as a solo operator. Not only can it require years of financial runway, but it’s also difficult for a single person to juggle a variety of tasks that include content creation, marketing, and business development.”

So? Where does all this really leave us?

Owens says it leaves us in a brave new world of partnerships, cooperatives, and jointly-created products. He gives examples of how each of these is already being done by people who create content and have an audience, and who are trying to monetize that content and audience, beyond just the work they can do themselves.

If you are running or want to run an info publishing businesses, or your own creator studio, then Owens’s article is worth a read. It might give you an idea that might mean the difference between failure and success in what you do.

And if you are currently a freelancer, or even a full-time employee at a marketing-led business, then Owens’s article is worth a read also, if only for an uncomfortable but possibly life-saving glimpse into what the future might bring unless you adapt.

In either case, if you are interested, here’s the link to Owens’s piece:

https://simonowens.substack.com/p/the-next-era-for-bootstrapped-media

Work on your business and not on delegating, systems, or automation

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Two nights ago I finally finished the 40-page pamphlet I’d been reading for three months, titled Leading With Your Head. It’s about the use of misdirection in magic. It ends with this:

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Tape your performances in front of an audience (either audio or video). Sit down and take notes. What works best for the audience? What doesn’t work (that you thought would)? Is there dead time you can eliminate? What needs to be improved? Keep the material that works, and concentrate on improving the weaknesses. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. It’s simply an excuse to avoid addressing more serious problems. Rehearse your improvements, then repeat the whole process again.

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It’s popular advice to say, work on your business, not in it.

The typical meaning of this is to delegate, build systems, automate the work. I’m sure that’s fine.

But there are ways of making a living — like my own — that are not about hiring and managing other people, not about scaling endlessly, and certainly not about automation. After all, what’s the sense in getting a magic-performing robot to go on stage and perform your magic show for you — if performing magic is what you like to do?

“Work on your business, not in it” is good advice. But in my personal case, I like the meaning above, the one from Leading With Your Head.

Plan and reflect, in addition to performing. It makes you better at what you like to do, and is in fact fun and enjoyable in itself, at least in my experience. And in my experience, it can be profitable too.

Last June 9th, I did an instance of this kind of working on my business. I opened up a text file on my computer and made a list, “10 things I’ve learned to do well over the past year.”

Item no. 2 on the list was “2. write [what I later came to call Most Valuable] emails.”

A couple weeks later, because of that small observation, I created a live training about Most Valuable Emails.

A month later, based on the surprising sales of the swipe file of Most Valuable Emails I offered at the end of the live training, I decided to create a standalone Most Valuable Email course.

I was hesitant — I figured anybody interested had already seen my presentation and wouldn’t buy. But again, I was surprised.

​​4.7% of my list bought the Most Valuable Email course during the launch. And interest hasn’t dropped off since, but has in fact gone up.

​​To date, 5.3% of my list has bought Most Valuable Email, though my list has grown by over 41% since last September, when I first launched the MVE course.

Great, right? — when you look at it from the perspective of how a typical info product sells. 2% or 3% of a qualified list is considered good.

But on the other hand, it also means 94.7% of my list has not yet bought Most Valuable Email.

​​Perhaps this includes you too.

There are many legit reasons why you might not want to buy Most Valuable Email. I list some of them right in the deck copy of the sales page.

On the other hand, there are also several legit reasons why you might want to buy Most Valuable Email. I list those in the deck copy as well.

In case you’d like to read that, and see and decide for yourself whether Most Valuable Email could be most valuable for you too, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

I feel bad today and so I’m very eager to write this email

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I’m on the couch under a blanket as I write this. It’s only 7:53am on Easter morning but I’m grateful to be up and awake because I spent an ugly night in bed, fighting feverish dreams.

My tongue feels burned. I’m a little tired and achy. I’m shivering even though it’s not cold in the room.

Two years ago, what I have right now would almost certainly have been diagnosed as corona. Today, it’s simply a bad cold or some unidentified viral infection.

All of which is to say, I’m very eager to write this email. Because if I’m eager to write when I feel good, and even more eager when I feel bad, then what army can resist me?

For the past few years I’ve been reading about famous Greeks and Romans. One of these was Marcus Claudius Marcellus, a Roman general and statesman. Marcellus was the first to give a check to Hannibal’s massive army as it was rampaging undefeated through Italy. This gave the Romans hope.

Other times, Marcellus lost to Hannibal. But he still kept harassing Hannibal’s army and frustrating Hannibal, one of the greatest military commanders in history. After months of unending skirmishes with Marcellus, Hannibal put his head in his hands and said:

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What can one do with a man who knows not how to bear either good or bad fortune? This is the only general who, when victorious allows his foe no rest, and when defeated takes none himself. We shall always, it seems, have to be fighting this man, who is equally excited to attack by his confidence when victor, and his shame when vanquished.

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Point being, you can find motivation in lots of things. Glory and confidence in times of success, shame and fury in times of failure.

Maybe it comes naturally to you to be motivated, like it seemed to come to Marcellus. But even if not, then with a bit of thinking, you can often create a conscious reframe of a bad situation. Not only will this produce superior results in time, but it can make you feel better when you’re feeling lousy.

And now, let me tell you about my Most Valuable Email course.

As I’ve written before, if I had to choose just one email copywriting approach for the rest of time, from here to eternity, I wouldn’t choose stories or personal reveals or pop culture illustrations or checklists or testimonials or hard-core how to or shock and controversy.

Instead, I would choose the Most Valuable Email trick.

For one thing, because of the results it produces — interesting and novel emails, which people love to read, and which teach me a thing or two also.

But there’s also the motivation issue. Most Valuable Emails are so valuable because I personally find them the most enjoyable to write. Going back to this type of email over and over has helped me stick with daily emailing for the long term, when I’m feeling good and when I’m feeling lousy, when things are working and when they’re not.

For more info on Most Valuable Email:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The disciplined, professional, hard-working beggar

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On my way to the gym, there’s a Mercadona, a local Spanish supermarket. In front of the entrance to the Mercadona, kneeling on the ground, looking serious and professional, there is almost always one specific beggar.

This man is large and strong. He has a neatly trimmed mustache. I guess he’s around 45 years old.

He usually wears a button-down shirt. He also has a little sponge down on the ground so he can kneel more comfortably. Sometimes, he has a drink next to him — from what I can tell, ice coffee.

When old women go inside Mercadona, this man will kneel and hold on to their dogs while they do their shopping. When the old women come out, they give him their loose change. One time, an old woman gave him a whole packaged chicken.

This man shows up early. When I go for my morning walk before work, he’s already on a bench next to Mercadona, waiting for the store to open up. He also seems to have a little part-time job setting up the chairs, tables, and parasols of the bar next to the Mercadona.

If you’re wondering how it is I know so much about this man, it’s because he is there most days, and for many hours a day. If I ever walk outside my house and around the corner to the Rambla del Poblenou, I inevitably see this man and what he is up to — which is usually waiting stoically for somebody to give him money, and for the workday to end.

I don’t know this guy’s history. I also don’t know how much loose change or raw chicken he manages to pull in a given week. I guess he’s doing okay since he keeps showing up. Still, I can’t believe he’s doing GRRRREAT.

And if you need some sort of takeaway from that, then let me come back to a fundamental point I’ve already made, over and over, year after year in this newsletter. And that’s the fact that you can pretty much do the same work, and get paid drastically different amounts of money for it.

The Mercadona beggar is disciplined and professional. He puts in the hours. He provides a real service to people — an opportunity for charity, plus the bonus of dog-sitting. He even hustles a little. He’s not satisfied simply coasting on his knees, ice coffee in hand, so he’s struck some sort of deal for extra work with the bar next door.

You might think I’m joking. I’m really not.

​​This guy works as hard and as long as most office workers. And many office workers work as hard and as long as most self-employed service providers. And many self-employed service providers work as hard and as long as most business owners.

And yet, there’s a vast difference between what people in each of those groups tend to earn. And vice versa. There’s a vast difference between what you can earn if you cater to people in each of those groups.

Maybe this makes no sense to you, or maybe you think it’s entirely impractical.

In that case, you will almost certainly not be interested in my offer today, which is my Most Valuable Email training. This training is only right for you if:

1. You’re willing to write an email to your list most days, preferably every day

2. You are interested in writing about marketing and copywriting

And by the way, just because Most Valuable Email requires that you write about marketing or copywriting, it in no way requires that you write to people who primarily define themselves as marketers or copywriters. In fact, it might be better to think of another group that you could write those same emails to, and get paid much more money as a result.

In any case, if you are interested in Most Valuable Email, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/