Motivation

“Nothing you suggest is working”

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Yesterday, I got an email from a reader who was trying to buy my Insight Exposed program. The order page was popping up an error message telling him his password was wrong — but there was no place to put in any kind of password.

I wrote back to this reader, explaining the two-step process to get rid of this error message. A few minutes later, he wrote back to say:

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Thanks for writing.

Nothing you suggest is working.

I am inept at things like this. Is there a thing called computer log in voodoo?

However even I have to say that IMHO your order page malfunction is probably costing a lot of money.

Just sayin, for your sake. And mine too because I do WANT TO BUY YOUR INSIGHT EXPOSED.

please help.

P.S. I do love reading your emails. I love your style and good spirit.

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As soon as I read this message, I remembered Tony Robbins. When Tony would host arena-sized self-improvement seminars, inevitably somebody would get up to the mic and say:

“Tony I just can’t get a job/find a boyfriend/make any money. Nothing is working. I’ve tried everything!”

To which Tony would arch his brow and, using his best Tony the Tiger voice, say:

“Everrrrrrything? Ok, tell me the last hundred things you’ve tried.”

“Hah, gee Tony, it wasn’t a hundred things…”

“All right, tell me the last twenty things you’ve tried.”

“Well, it wasn’t twenty either…”

“Ok, tell me the last five things you’ve tried.”

“Well you see Tony, I’m just really having a lot of trouble getting started…”

And so it was with my reader above. I wrote him back to ask what exactly he had tried that wasn’t working. I didn’t get a response. But a short time later, I did get a notification that he had bought Insight Exposed from me.

I’m not blaming this guy or anybody else. I just wanted to tell you about that Tony Robbins “Everrrrrrything?” response, which might be useful with people who say nothing is working. And if you’re anything like me, those people might include yourself at times.

Anyways, I’ve gotten a surprising and pleasing number of orders so far for Insight Exposed, which makes me doubt that my problematic order page is costing me a lot of money.

That doesn’t change the reality that my order page and my entire cart/membership software are quirky and unintuitive. That’s something I will have to deal with in time. For now though, I’ll have to just have to manually reply to a few readers who are having problems with their order process.

In case you yourself are interested in Insight Exposed, you will have to get on my email list first, because this is an offer I am only making available to my newsletter subscribers. If you’d like to get on my list, here’s where to go.

Three money stories from the second Insights & More book

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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

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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

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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

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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,

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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:

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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.

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

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The mystery of taking a 4-foot dive

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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:

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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 )

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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/

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

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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):

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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/

How to get access to the most elite opportunities and most exclusive clubs

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In case you’re the type who wants access to the most elite opportunities and most exclusive clubs, here’s an instructive story:

Carter Burwell is an American film composer. He has scored dozens of big-budget Hollywood movies, including The Big Lebowski, Being John Malkovich, No Country For Old Men, and Twilight.

But Burwell is not just a film composer. He has has a very colorful history.

Even before the age of 20, Burwell was already a trained animator, a would-be rock star, a factory worker, a would-be architect, and a self-taught computer programmer.

And then one day, after seeing a help-wanted ad in the New York Times, Burwell got hired as chief computer scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Lab, working for Nobel prize winner James Watson, codiscoverer of the structure of DNA.

How did Burwell get inside this elite and exclusive club? From an article about Burwell I just read:

“Burwell wrote a jokey letter in which he said that, although he had none of the required skills, he would cost less to employ than someone with a Ph.D. would. Surprisingly, the letter got him the job, and he spent two years as the chief computer scientist on a protein-cataloguing project funded by a grant from the Muscular Dystrophy Association.”

My point is not to write jokey application letters or cold emails.

It’s certainly not to compete on being cheaper than other options.

My point is simply to be immensely lucky, the way Burwell obviously is.

And in case you’re shocked and possibly outraged by that point, then let me rephrase it in a more how-to way:

Figure out how to weigh the odds so heavily in your favor… that you can be sure you’ve won, long before the coin has been tossed in the air.

That’s an idea from A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos.

It’s a bit of personal philosophy that Parris practices. It’s how he keeps getting access to the most elite copywriting opportunities, and working with the most exclusive clients.

Maybe you want some examples of what this means in practice.

You can find those in my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters, specifically chapter two, which is all about Parris’s “stack the odds” idea above. That chapter also ties in nicely to the Carter Burwell story above. Si te interesa:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Money don’t love Spruce Goose

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On a beautiful day exactly 75 years ago, Howard Hughes smiled for the camera, hung up the in-cockpit telephone, and took hold of the controls.

He was piloting the largest “flying boat” ever built.

I’m talking about the Hughes H-4 Hercules, aka the Spruce Goose.

In spite of the nickname, The Goose was mostly birch.

That didn’t stop it from being enormously expensive for the time. And with good reason. As Hughes put it:

“It is over five stories tall with a wingspan longer than a football field. That’s more than a city block. Now, I put the sweat of my life into this thing. I have my reputation all rolled up in it and I have stated several times that if it’s a failure, I’ll probably leave this country and never come back. And I mean it.”

Well, I guess Hughes didn’t mean it all that seriously. Because he didn’t leave the country, even though, by all practical measures, the Goose turned out to be a colossal failure.

After all, once Hughes lifted The Goose above the sparkling waters off Long Beach, CA, it flew for less than a minute, for less than a mile.

That was its one and only flight.

And even this one lousy flight came well after the end of World War II, even though The Goose was designed to be a war transport plane, and even though the whole point of building The Goose out of spruce (or birch) was the wartime restriction on materials such as aluminum.

So yeah, the Spruce Goose remains the best illustration of a massive, drawn-out, and ultimately useless project.

The point being, don’t be like this. Don’t roll “the sweat of your life”, your name and reputation, and possibly your country of residence into one drawn-out project which won’t get a chance for even a test flight until years from now.

Because money don’t love Spruce Goose.

Money loves speed.

I’ve tried to track down who coined that saying, but I don’t have a definitive answer. I’ve heard Dan Kennedy say it often. Joe Vitale has got a book by that title. But I bet it goes back a century or more, in some slightly different phrasing, with the same basic idea. Maybe you can enlighten me.

Anyways, let me take my own advice, and wrap up this post:

My email newsletter is now available for you to join. In case you’d like a chance to get copywriting, marketing, and persuasion ideas into your head — so you can start getting that money that speed promises — here’s where to go.

Copywriting is a crazy business, but it’s not unlike any other business

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A few weeks ago, a reader named Ferdinand wrote me to say he has written a book, but he is afraid to advertise it because he’s not sure it’s any good. Would I be kind and selfless enough to take a look and tell him if it’s ok to put out?

I was kind and selfless enough to respond to Ferdinand, saying that I charge people a great deal of money to review copy and content — but good on him for trying.

That was a mistake.

Because yesterday, I got a second email from Ferdinand. He said he didn’t get the precise response he was looking for with regard to the book. And that’s okay. But he still wants to bother me a little bit.

Would I give him a job? Any kind of a job? The pay doesn’t matter, as long as it’s consistent. He knows he can do more than what he’s currently doing, and copywriting is his dream, and he wants to chase it…

This reminded me of a scene in the King of Comedy.

Robert De Niro plays a wannabe standup comedian. He’s a big fan of a late-night talk show host played by Jerry Lewis.

One night, as Jerry is leaving the studio and getting into a cab, De Niro pushes his way through the crowd and jumps into the cab with Jerry.

Jerry is startled, even frightened. But De Niro reassures him. He just needs to talk for a minute. Right now, he’s working in “communications” but by nature he’s a comedian. His stuff is dynamite, it’s his dream, he just needs a break…

Once Jerry’s heart rate comes down a bit from the scare, he gives De Niro some practical advice:

“Look pal, gotta tell you… This is a crazy business, but it’s not unlike any other business. There are ground rules. And you don’t just walk on to a network show without experience. Now I know it’s an old, hackneyed expression but it happens to be the truth. You’ve got to start at the bottom.”

No?

You don’t like that old, hackneyed expression?

You want something a little more “hustle culture”-y, a little more Tim Ferriss-y? Ok, try this on and see if it fits:

In my experience in the direct response industry, it’s always a lousy idea to ask for a job. Even if you’re starting at the bottom. It’s much better to put yourself in a position where people ask you to work with them. In the words of Claude Hopkins, offer a privilege, not an inducement.

Are you still with me? That’s surprising. But in that case, you might get value from other emails and essays I write. In case you want to read them, you can sign up to my daily email newsletter.