Personal Change

The psychology of being an idiot

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In reply to my email yesterday, a puzzled reader wrote in to ask:

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How did you initially start your list? Like to get those first few people in the door. I feel like we’ve never been told your origin story to how this list became to be what it is.

Maybe I’m wrong, I’ve only been reading for 2 years, though your list is older then that. And I don’t even know how I got here.

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I’ve been reading a lot about newsletter growth lately, and the above is a frequent question that comes up.

“How did you get your first few subscribers? Your first 100? Your first 1,000?”

The most common answer I’ve read is, “Oh, at the start, I just asked people in my network if they’d like to sign up.”

That is not what I did. For one, I don’t have a network. For another, I don’t like asking anybody for anything. (They might say no, and then what!)

I started my list over 5 years ago.

​​I checked just now, and it took me 18 months and 5 days from starting daily emailing to my get my first 100 subscribers.

The background of why it took me that long is that I’m an idiot, or just very stubborn, depending on your moral compass.

For the longest time, the only thing I did was write my daily emails, and post them to my website.

I did on a few occasions post something smart and professional in copywriting groups on Facebook. I believe I managed to get two, maybe even three new subscribers that way.

But mainly, I was just grinding away, because like I said, I’m an idiot, or just very stubborn.

My plan was never really to build this email list into anything.

My only vague goal was to get better at writing emails, and to have something to show potential clients as a demonstration of my skill. That was back when I still did client work, which is something I don’t do any more.

And yet, I continue to write daily emails today.

I’m currently reading a book, The Psychology of Money.

It was published a little over three years ago. Today, it has over 43k reviews on Amazon, 32k of them being five-star.

Basically, the book tells you how your own psychology gets in the way of your making money, growing money, and keeping whatever money you’ve managed to make or grow.

None of those are topics I’m interested in at all. But I realized I could make this book more interesting to myself by switching out “money” and switching in “business” or “project.” Suddenly, the lessons became familiar and dear:

– Think long term, and let the power of compounding work for you

– Be okay with a wide range of outcomes

– Realize that you will change — what you think you will value in the future is probably not accurate

So that’s kind of the Bejako origin story, and the explanation of my motivations in driving this newsletter onwards in the way that I do, well into my 6th year with it.

Now, I can imagine that my origin story sounds entirely uninspiring. It’s kind of the opposite of wandering into the wrong room, lingering just a second too long, and getting bitten by a radioactive spider that dropped from the ceiling.

To make up for my uninspiring email today, tomorrow I will tell you a way that, while I still had practically nobody reading this newsletter, I grew another newsletter to a few thousands readers in a matter of weeks, and filled it with quality subscribers.

That’s on tomorrow’s episode of the Bejako Show.

Meanwhile, if you want lessons on success with any long-term project, consider Morgan Housel’s Psychology Of Money, and it’s 32,000 5-star reviews.

​​If you’d like to take a look, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/housel

10% success vs. 100% success

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Once upon a time, I found myself in a frightening environment — a night club. ​​I was there with a friend. Let’s call him Dave.

​​Dave is not a remarkably beautiful man. If anything, he’s rather physically unattractive.

Now, as you might guess by my opening sentence, a nightclub is not my kind of place.

But from what I understand, the one I was in with Dave was typical. There was a stage, people dancing, music, lights.

Dave started dancing in place next to me.

He then danced his way over to a girl in the crowd.

​​He continued to dance, all the way around her, like some kind of bird of paradise.

When the girl showed no interest, Dave danced his way back to me at the edge of the dance floor.

He shrugged his shoulders and explained his philosophy. “If I go out, and only one out of ten girls likes me, that’s not a 10% success rate. That’s a 100% success rate.”

This message has stuck with me ever since.

Incidentally, today Dave is a highly paid lawyer, working when he wants and from wherever he might feel like. He also happens to be married to and have a kid with a beautiful girl who initially wouldn’t give him the time of day.

I thought of this story today after I got a message from long-time reader Logan Hobson.

Logan is an email copywriter. He writes emails for big-time real estate investing gurus who have audiences of 80k+ people. He repeatedly does 5-figure email-based launches for these guys.

Logan was writing in response to my email yesterday, in which I explained my simple, 5-minute way to come up with 2-3 good email ideas each day — no writer’s block required. To which Logan wrote:

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I like the idea that writer’s block doesn’t really exist – it’s more just idea block.

Once you have a good idea, the words just write themselves. If one of your 10 ideas stands out a good one, then the words just flow.

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In other words, if you sit down to write… and only one out of ten ideas flows well and turns out to be something that makes you money… then that’s not a 10% success rate. That’s a 100% success rate.

Seamless transition alert:​​

If you want more help coming up with email ideas, specifically ones that flow well and make you money, then check out my Most Valuable Email course.

Logan got that course a year ago. And after he went through it, here’s what he wrote me to say:

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After going through MVE, it feels like the veil has been lifted off some of your writing in the most enjoyable way.

Like a magician who is about to do a trick, but winks at those who know and revealing exactly what he’s about to do, leaving those who aren’t in the know none the wiser.

However in this case, it doesn’t ruin the magic, it just makes it even more enjoyable.

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For more info on Most Valuable Email, and how it can help you grow an audience and make money:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

How to come up with 2-3 good email ideas each day

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Last night, I was sitting on the couch when my ex-girlfriend came over from the kitchen.

It’s an odd situation. We’re broken up. But we still live together. And we’re on good terms.

“Are you writing your email?” she asked.

I looked at her like she’s crazy. “No, I did it this morning. I’m done for today.”

She nodded. “What’s tomorrow’s email going to be about?”

“Who knows,” I said.

“So how will you write it then?”

“It will be very, very hard,” I said with mock sadness.

​​But like I explained to my ex last night, it’s never really very, very hard, because I have a large and growing list of email ideas in my BEJ journal.

If I ever don’t have something fresh to write about, I can always reach into my journal. I find this resource so valuable that I even created a course once, Insight Exposed, all about my obsessive note-taking and journaling system.

But that’s not what I want to share with you today.

Because today, I didn’t reach into my journal for this email’s topic.

Instead, I did what I often do when I don’t have a clear idea of what to write.

I opened a new text file and started a list. I titled it daily10. Under that title, I came up with 10 possible ideas for today’s email, without discarding even ones that are not really good.

It took me all of 5 minutes.

Not all the ideas were ones that I will turn into an email. But of the ten, one was promising and three were good.

A couple of these possible email ideas I liked better than telling you about my ex and my daily10 process.

​​But since the reason I came up with those ideas in the first place was that daily10 process… I thought I would put those better ideas on hold and tell you about this valuable way to quickly come up with 2-3 good ideas for your daily emails.

So now you know.

And if you ever thought you suffered from “writer’s block”… well, now you also know that it’s really just an excuse not to sit down and write down 10 possible ideas, even if all of them are bad.

But enough inspiration. On to sales:​​

In a convoluted way, my email today is an example of my Most Valuable Email trick in action.

I hope I haven’t given too much away. Maybe I have.

​​But if there is still something that you think you can learn about the Most Valuable Email trick, then you can get educated via the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Take a look at this

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Maybe you’ve heard that last month, marketer Todd Brown assembled a gathering called Copy Legends:

A bunch of top copywriters, in a mansion in Palm Beach. Sitting around a big table. Talking openly for a day, while cameras and microphones record it all.

What did these legendary copywriters have to say?
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Well, for example, during a discussion of headlines, Copy Legend Kyle Milligan, who used to be a copy chief at financial publisher Agora and who made a name for himself by analyzing sales letters on YouTube, said the following:

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I believe everyone way overcomplicates what needs to be done at the start of a promotion. They’re looking for this whiz-bang tactic to grab attention.

Yet, there are these tried-and-true openers which continue to work like crazy. Like, a visual pattern interrupt that just says ‘look at this’ and gets the prospect to sort of adjust and focus for a second is like one of the most timeless, time-tested methods there is.

If you don’t know what else to do for an opener, go with ‘Take a look at this.’ It’s like old faithful.

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Kyle’s comment got a lot of people nodding their legendary heads around the Copy Legends table.

I found this amusing.

Because it’s a kind of anti-proof element for the whole concept of Copy Legends. As Todd says himself in the headline for the Copy Legends sales page, that concept is:

​“NEW Copy Techniques Working Like Crazy Today”

As in, they didn’t exist yesterday, and they will probably change by tomorrow.

It makes good sense to position an offer like this.

Like Kyle said around the Copy Legends table, people want that promise. They want whiz-bang tactics. And they will pay good money for such whiz-bangery, even though the really effective methods, as Kyle said at the actual Copy Legends event, are things that keep working year after year, decade after decade.

Todd Brown will soon release upon the world his Copy Legends recordings.

I won’t be buying it. But I certainly won’t tell you not to buy if you are after “new copy techniques.”

On the other hand, perhaps you are looking for timeless, time-tested copywriting techniques.

​​Technique that worked 50 years ago, 5 years ago, 5 months ago… and that will continue to work into the future, because they are based on fundamental human psychology and the competitive research of history’s greatest copywriters.

If that’s what you’re looking for, then… take a look at this:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

AI expert tells you how to learn copywriting

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I’m preparing for the live presentation I’m supposed to give at The Copywriter Club London event on Wednesday.

My flight is tomorrow, and then Wednesday afternoon I’m supposed to perform.

While I’m not yet at full-blown levels of panic, there is still a lot more I would like to do to prepare. I hope that with preparation I can minimize the shock and horror and chance of humiliation when I actually do get up in front of people and talk on Wednesday.

All that’s to say, don’t expect any involved Bejako Baggins emails today. I have to keep today’s email short and to the point.

So let me pull out a bit of credibility I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks.

This bit of credibility comes from Steve Raju, who has transformed himself over the past year from your run-of-the-mill genius into a high-paid corporate AI whisperer.

Though it’s worth noting that, previous to this new AI career, Steve was a direct response copywriter. He even taught copywriting, both on his own trainings and inside Stefan Georgi’s thing.

Anyways, in the middle of a characteristically charming email a few weeks ago, Steve got serious for a moment to give some advice to those who want to learn copywriting:

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Write every day. I never knew a single writer who got better about writing, without umm… writing. Write headlines, leads and closes. Write emails. Write ads. Launch your own offers. Learn what works. And of all the things to learn to write well, learn to write bullets. Best person to learn from? John Bejakovic and his Copy Riddles course. The best course of them all. I’m really not joking.

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I am also not joking when I say that, during the few minutes it’s taken me to put together this email, a wave of nausea has washed over me, caused I suppose by that impending presentation in London.
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So if you don’t mind, I’ll go now and pull my hair a bit and then get back to work on that presentation.

Meanwhile, if you would like to learn to write bullets, so you can learn to write better copy in general, and who knows, maybe even better presentations, then here’s what Steve calls the best course of them all:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

This might be the first sales email in history to reference Pico della Mirandola… but probably not

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Yesterday, I wrote an email about Bertrand Russell’s idea of what the unconscious is really made of. Reader Matt Perryman wrote in to tell me this idea ain’t nothing new:

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Not a coincidence by any stretch, but the idea behind Russell’s take on the unconscious is much older than his quote (and much older than Freud, who supposedly “discovered” it). It dates back to at least the Renaissance, when a few writers like Ficino and Pico della Mirandola rediscovered Plato and ancient magical traditions. Today, you have “chaos magicians” and all sorts of Law of Attraction people using this idea. Kind of funny that it dates back to antiquity, and possibly long before that.

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I was grateful to Matt for writing me this, because I love this kind of history of ideas stuff.

It always turns out somebody’s had a bright new idea today — but it actually goes back hundreds or thousands of years, when some tunic-and-sandal-wearing ancient thought about it on a much deeper level.

All that’s to say, there’s value, even practical value, in going back and reading what smart people from other ages have said and written.

But on to business:

I do not know the intellectual history of what I call the Most Valuable Email trick. But if I had to bet, I’d bet that the first time it was applied was thousands of years ago, in ancient Greece or maybe before, in some ancient email written on a wax tablet.

I’d bet on that because the Most Valuable Email trick is based on fundamental human psychology. And I’d bet on it because this trick creates the rare and unique feeling of insight, particularly in “teachy” situations, like daily emails can be sometimes.

Since the MVE trick is based on fundamental human psychology, it has persisted through the ages and will always persist, as long as humans communicate with each other in some form.

But for whatever reason, the Most Valuable Email trick is not used broadly, at least in the daily email space.

That’s both a shame, and an opportunity. In case you’d like to start taking advantage of that opportunity today:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Very smart man: The unconscious is not what you think it is

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I came by the following inspiring idea via Justin Murphy’s Other Life newsletter.

The idea itself comes from Bertrand Russell. Russell was what you might call an all-around very smart man. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature — he did write some 70 books and 2,000 articles — but he was really a philosopher and mathematician.

I’m telling you this because the idea in the following quote is not provable, but is the result of introspection. The fact that Russell was very smart might give it some extra weight when you read it. Anyway, here’s Russell’s idea:

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My own belief is that a conscious thought can be planted into the unconscious if a sufficient amount of vigour and intensity is put into it. Most of the unconscious consists of what were once highly emotional conscious thoughts, which have now become buried.

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Like I said, I found this inspiring.

In this view, your unconscious is no longer some dark ocean, which has its own impulses that toss you about like a little raft on the surface.

Your unconscious is not even some bizarre supercomputer that you can tap into via visualization, NLP, or psychocybernetics.

Instead, your unconscious is just what went on in your head previously — experiences and thoughts deposited, compressed, perhaps fused together via pressure and time.

The reason to be inspired is that what you think about today will be with you in the future. This gives you both power and responsibility, like Peter Parker, regarding what you’re doing and thinking right now.

Incidentally, a great way to think about worthwhile stuff and to do so with intensity is to write.

​​When you’re writing, you will come up with distinctions and observations you wouldn’t come up with if you try to hold on to a few thoughts in your head.

And if you’re already writing, you might as well publish it, and send it out into the world. If you figured out or discovered something good, others will benefit from it too. And that comes back to you in time. ​​Besides, writing to others will make you try harder.

All of these are are reasons why personal daily emails, like what you’re reading right now, are a great format.

And if you do decide to write daily emails, with a view to power and responsibility, then you might as well do it in the most valuable way using my most Valuable Email trick.

I’m tiptoeing the line here of giving away too much of what this training is about.

So let me just say Most Valuable Email is about putting vigor and intensity into thinking about marketing or copywriting or influence.

​​It’s about writing a fun and often shareable email about it.

​And it’s about having new skills and attitudes planted deep into your unconscious, from where they can emerge, months or years down the line, exactly when you need them.

For more on Most Valuable Email, or to get started right now:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

The best presentation Rich Schefren has ever given

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On a road trip with a friend through Ireland this past August, I listened to a podcast that featured Moby, the bald, skinny, spectacled techno producer who’s sold some 20 million records worldwide.

Moby told an intimate story about a night before the 2002 MTV Awards.

I didn’t know, but Moby was apparently one of the biggest music stars in the world at that time.

For the MTV Awards, he was being housed in a fancy hotel in Barcelona — “one of the most elegant hotels I’ve ever been to,” he says — in one of the hotel’s four penthouse apartments. In the other three apartments were Madonna, Bon Jovi, and P. Diddy.

And yet, the night before the awards, Moby started to feel suicidal.

The reality was had been given everything — money, fame, appreciation — and yet he wasn’t happy. He had tried to drink his troubles away, but even that didn’t work.

So there Moby was, in his penthouse apartment, trying to figure out how to open up the big glass windows so he could jump out and end the misery. (He couldn’t figure out the windows either.)

This story struck me when I heard it. But really, if you listen a bit, you will hear the same story from a lot of people who go from absolutely nothing to absolutely everything.

It feels great for a while. A pretty short while.

But if it turns out that this is really all there is to it — living in the penthouse apartment, in an elegant hotel, with Madonna and P. Diddy as neighbors, with all the money and fame and achievement you could ever want — what follows is first emptiness, then craziness:

“Is it my fault? Am I such an idiot that I cannot appreciate all this? How messed up am I?”

Or…

“Was I so blind to pick the the wrong goal? Did I work like a dog all my life to get to the wrong destination, one I never really wanted?”

Or…

“Is it that there’s no sense in having any goals to begin with? Is all achievement and striving ultimately a race to disappointment?”

These are ugly questions. Maybe you started feeling uneasy just reading them. ​​It’s no wonder that people who find themselves ruminating on such questions often start to feel crazy or even suicidal.
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Good news:
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The answer to all three questions is ultimately, “No, that’s not it.”

I could go into the psychology and neurology of it, what I know of it, but really, it’s much better to hear a story or three about it, and to be inspired along the way.

The best and most inspiring bunch of stories I’ve found on this topic come from business coach Rich Schefren, from a talk that Rich gave a year ago.

Rich answers all the questions above, and tells you what goals really are, and what they are for.

It was new and inspiring to me when I first heard it.

I still think about Rich’s points often.

And so I want to share his talk with you once again, and remind myself of it as well. In case you’re curious, here’s Rich on stage, giving the best presentation he’s ever given:

https://pages.strategicprofits.com/rich-diamond-day-c

What a first-rate roper needs

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The “big con” requires two central con men. One is the insideman; the other is the roper.

The insideman has the “opportunity” to get something for nothing, which is what ultimately seduces and dooms the mark.

The insideman stays put and waits for the roper, who goes out into the world and “ropes in” the mark.

A good roper needs to have: the gift of the gab; surface knowledge of lots of topics; the ability to pretend and act; a magic quality known as “grift sense”; and the willingness to withstand the high stress of constantly being exposed while trying to scheme and swindle himself into a mark’s confidence out in the wild.

That’s what it takes to be a good roper. But what does it take to be a first-rate roper?

David Mauerer, a professor of linguistics and author of The Big Con, asked this question to two big-con ropers back in the 1930s. here’s what one of them said:

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Will-power is the most important asset a con man can have. Have you ever watched a grifter who stayed in one position all his life and never advanced? It is pitiful to see how much mental energy he uses up getting nowhere. If he is a smack-player, he won’t try to get up any higher in the racket. Most failures wear themselves out with futile grifting and worry about keeping out of the can. They work themselves into a fever because they haven’t the will-power to stop and organize themselves for efficiency and try to get a big mark for the big store.

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(The “smack,” by the way, is a short-con game, as opposed to the big con, which is at the top of the confidence game hierarchy. Short-con games like the smack have lower stakes, lower earnings, and less prestige among grifters than the big con.)

Now, maybe don’t want to take any kind of business advice from criminals.

Fair enough. I can’t fault you, and I won’t try to persuade you otherwise.

Personally though, I found the above quote made me stop and think. To me at least, it applies even outside the world of confidence men.

The key words for me were continuing to “play the smack”… instead of having the will-power to stop and organize yourself so you can get to the next level.

Only you can figure out what it might take to get you there.

Maybe it’s skills… presentation… connections… attitude… experience… or an entire change in approach.

Again, only you can figure it out. And it will take will-power to get you to do so.

Anyways, if by chance you find out that it’s skills that you need, specifically copywriting skills, here’s how you can learn from the people who have made it to the absolute top of the copywriting racket:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The comeback secret of a humiliated Major League pitcher

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I read an interesting article this week about Colorado Rockies pitcher Daniel Bard, who was infected multiple times with the yips.

Bard started out a baseball prodigy. Even in his teens, he could throw at close to 100 miles per hour.

In one famous, high-pressure situation, while pitching for the Red Sox, Bard came on with the bases loaded.

He struck out Hall of Famer Derek Jeter with three pitches. Then All-Star Nick Swisher came to bat.

Bard first threw two strikes. But it was Bard’s third pitch that made history.

​​It was later called by Sports Illustrated “one of the nastiest, most unhittable pitches that the world has ever seen,” a 99-mph fastball that went straight at the center of the plate only to wildly dip into the dirt at the last millisecond.

Swisher swung through empty air and tossed his arms up in frustration. “It’s not supposed to move like that,” he said later.

All good — until one season, when Bard completely lost control where the ball was flying. He started to hit players. He sailed the ball high and hit the back stop. He threw to first base but instead the ball landed in the dirt.

The technical term for this condition is the yips. Nervousness, anxiety, whatever.

Bard had gotten tight, and no amount of deep breathing, meditation, or top-level sports psychology could help him.

That’s the inevitable intro I had to give you just to set up the following paragraph, which was the most practical and valuable I found in this interesting article.

Bard cured his yips eventually, and made it back to the Major Leagues after quitting. He even became a star pitcher once again. But the yips started to creep back in. Then the following happened:

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In the off-season, a friend who coaches at U.N.C. Charlotte suggested that he throw a two-seam fastball from an arm slot two inches higher than his usual position. Bard had spent years tinkering with his arm slots, to disastrous effect. But he understood his body and his mind better now. Instead of instructing his body, he tried imitation, thinking of pitchers with higher arm slots and mimicking them. The ball hissed out of his hand and sank. That fastball became his best pitch.

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In case it’s not clear, what I found interesting was this idea to mimic and imitate successful people, rather than tinker with your technique.

This can apply to whatever you’re doing.

Say copywriting.

One option is to sit down and say,

“All right, what’s the level of sophistication in this market? Should I use the if-then headline formula here? Or the how-to? Or the case-against? Or maybe it’s best to lead off with authority, to diffuse the readers’ skepticism?”

That’s the tinkering option.

The other option is mimicry. You set aside all the talk about sophistication and headline formulas and authority. Instead, you sit down, rub your hands together and say,

“Right. Say I’m John Carlton. In fact, let me put on a Hawaiian shirt. What would I focus on here? What kind of headline would I write if I were John?”

Is mimicry the optimal way to learn?

I don’t know. It prolly depends on your own psychological makeup.

But it’s almost sure that most skills are taught and learned via the tinkering approach, with almost no thought given to mimicry. That’s a shame, because mimicry can be a great way to get better, and fast, and painlessly.

But on to work:

It’s true, my Copy Riddles course does break down copy into component parts, and instructs you on what to do. It even gives you a tinker-y checklist of how to write good copy, from alfalfa to zucchini.

But the real strength of Copy Riddles is the mimicry part.

Write copy… see what A-list copywriters like John Carlton did with the same prompt… then do it all over, while mimicking, imitating, or channeling those A-list copywriters.

For more info on this approach, which has been endorsed by Major Leaguers like Gary Bencivenga, Parris Lampropoulos, and Gary Halbert, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr