Personal Change

An “eery dejà vu feeling” from my Fight Club email last night

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Last night, I sent out an email about going to see Fight Club at a local movie theater. To which I got the following reply from copywritress Liza Schermann, who has been living the “barefoot writer” life in sunny Edinburgh, Scotland. Liza wrote:

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Seeing this email in my inbox provoked an eery dejà vu feeling. I had just gone over the part of Insight Exposed where you have a screenshot of this note from your journal. For a split second, I had no idea where I’d seen this before. Then I remembered.

Like an open kitchen restaurant, only for email. The email that was getting cooked right before my eyes a few minutes ago is now served. Thank you, Chef Bejakovic! 👨‍🍳

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I remember hearing marketer and copywriter Dan Kennedy say once that you shouldn’t ever let clients see you writing copy, because it’s not impressive work and it spoils the mystique.

That might be good advice, but I definitely don’t heed it Insight Exposed, my new training about how I take notes and keep journals.

Like Liza says, Insight Exposed is like an open kitchen. I smile from beneath my chef’s hat, I explain the provenance of a few recent emails, and I show you the various animal bits and pieces from which the email sausage was made.

Let me be clear:

Insight Exposed is not a copywriting training. But it shows you something that may be more important and valuable than copywriting technique. It shows you how I go from a bit of information I spotted somewhere and expand it into something that makes people buy, remember, share, and maybe even change their own minds.

I am only making Insight Exposed available to people who are signed up to my email list. In case you are interested in Insight Exposed, you can sign up for my list here.

I am not dangerous, but I am interested in dangerous people

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This past September, I went to the Barcelona Martial Arts Academy for my third-ever attempt at training Brazilian jujitsu.

My second-ever attempt was 10 years ago, in the gym of an elementary school in Budapest, Hungary. My first-ever attempt was freshman year of college, in Santa Cruz, California, in the school of a proper Brazilian-born BJJ champion.

On each attempt, I didn’t last more than a few months. But obviously there’s something that appeals to me about the sport, since I keep thinking about it and coming back to it decade after decade.

All that’s to say, I am not in any way dangerous, in spite of multiple attempts to become so. But I am interested in dangerous people. And I’d like to tell you something surprising I just learned from a very dangerous man.

A few days ago, while at the gym, I got to listening to an interview with Frank Shamrock. Shamrock was the first UFC Middleweight Champion. He was the No. 1-ranked pound-for-pound fighter in the world during his reign. He retired undefeated from the UFC.

At the start of that interview I listened to, Shamrock matter-of-factly said he achieved all this by becoming the world’s first “superathlete.” I don’t have an exact definition of what a “superathlete” is, but I do get the gist of what Shamrock means.

So the question then becomes, how did Shamrock become the world’s first “superathlete”? From the interview:

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I was the only guy with a notebook, for years. That’s one of the reasons I figured it out. Cause I wrote it down, asked questions, created a theory. Practice, apply, if it works, put it in stone.

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I felt quite dangerous after hearing this. Frank Shamrock keeps a notebook, and so do I.

Of course, my notebook is not about the best ways to break people. But I do have a notebook about the best ways to persuade people. It works the same way. Find a new idea, write it down, apply it. Review the results, if it works, put it in stone.

I’m currently promoting my Insight Exposed training. It talks about the system I’ve devised for keeping notebooks, journals, keeping track of good ideas, reflecting to get better.

​​This system has made me exponentially better at copywriting, at marketing, at persuasion. But it’s done much more than that as well. I use the same journaling system for everything. Enjoying life… a project I call “religion”… even the process of journaling itself.

Which brings up an anti-sales point:
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The fact is, nobody needs my Insight Exposed training. You can take Frank Shamrock’s approach above and apply it to become the world’s first “supernotetaker.” That’s what I did, and in time, it worked out just fine.

The only reason you might want my Insight Exposed training is that it can tell you the lessons I’ve learned, so you can save hours or days of your time along your journey. Even more importantly, getting Insight Exposed today might get you working on your own “superhuman” system now, instead of in a year from now.

I’m only making Insight Exposed available to people who are signed up to my daily email newsletter. In case you’d like to get on my email list, click here and fill out the form that appears.

“How is being clever working out for you?”

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A few months ago, I went to a local old-school movie theater and queued in a line that stretched around the block. In the entire line, there were maybe three women. The rest were all guys, mostly young guys, under 25.

The movie being shown was Fight Club.

I got several valuable snapshots from that experience. The most valuable was an exchange from the actual movie, a scene in which the main character, “the Narrator,” played by Ed Norton, meets Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt.

The two are sitting next to each other on a plane. Tyler starts telling the Ed Norton character how you can make all kinds of explosives using simple household items. And then the following exchange goes down:

NARRATOR: Tyler, you are by far the most interesting single-serving friend I have ever met. [Pause.] See I have this thing, everything on a plane is single-serving—

TD: Oh, I get it. It’s very clever.

NARRATOR Thank you.

TD: How is that working out for you? Being clever?

NARRATOR [a little unnerved, shrugs his shoulders.] Great.

TD: Keep that up then. Keep it right up.

I read an article a few months ago, The Impotence of Being Clever. It’s one of a few related blips on my radar. Another was a second article, Beware What Sounds Insightful.

Both articles circle around the growing mass-realization that things that sound clever and insightful often aren’t — that “insightful” is a brand of shiny varnish that can be applied to any cheap furniture.

Last fall, I put on a live training called Age of Insight. It was all about exactly this brand of shiny varnish. About presentation techniques that take any idea and make it sound profound.

I’ve done a ton of thinking about this topic, and as a result, Age of Insight is the most in-depth treatment of it that anybody has created, at least to my knowledge.

Like I wrote back when I was putting on that training, I believe insightful presentation techniques will become mandatory in coming years. You will have to know them and use them, just like you have to know copywriting techniques to effectively sell a product, at least if you want to do it in writing.

There’s a deeper parallel there:

You can use copywriting techniques to sell a mediocre product. And you will sell some of it, definitely more than if you didn’t use proven copywriting techniques. But you are unlikely to sell a lot of it, or sell it for very long.

On the other hand, you can use copywriting techniques to sell a good or even great product. You can make a fortune doing that, feel good about it, and even enjoy the process for the long term.

The same with this insight stuff.

You can use insightful presentation techniques to sell a mediocre idea. And you will do better than if you didn’t use them at all.

But if you also find a genuinely novel, surprising, even mind-blowing idea, and then use insight techniques to sell that — well, the result can be explosive, and it can survive for the long term.

I’m not sure when will I re-release Age of Insight, which deals with the presentation side. But right now, I’m releasing Insight Exposed, which is about good or great “insight products” — meaning novel, surprising, even mind-blowing ideas.
Insight Exposed is only available to people who are on my email list. If you’d like to get on my list, click here and fill ou the form that appears.

Announcing: Insight Exposed

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Today, I’m launching a new course, Insight Exposed. It reveals the secret weapon behind my ability to write insightful content: my own home-brewed journaling, note-taking, and archiving system.

The launch will run through this Saturday. I have a lot more to say about Insight Exposed, but since this course is only available to people who are signed up to my email list, there’s no sense in sharing all that publicly.

In case you are interested in Insight Exposed, or in developing your own journaling and note-taking system, one that could save you hundreds of hours of work, you might want to get on my email list. Click here to do that.

My best recommendation for books that are sure to give you a change of perspective

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Back in 2019, I started reading an obscure non-fiction book called The Land Beyond the Forest. I got the idea to read it because I heard that it was a source for Bram Stoker, when he created the modern character of Count Dracula.

The Land Beyond the Forest was written by Emily Gerard, a Scottish woman who lived in Transylvania, modern Romania, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Gerard wrote up a kind of sociological character study of the Germans, Romanians, Hungarians, and Gypsies who lived around her.

At that time, Transylvania, with its deep forests and high mountains, still had pockets of medieval life in quickly modernizing, industrializing, urban Europe. The people Gerard wrote about truly lived with different traditions and beliefs to what’s become dogma in the past century or so. I guess that’s what Bram Stoker was latching on to when he used Gerard’s book for inspiration.

For example, Gypsies in Gerard’s time were a forest-dwelling, pot-mending, violin-playing elf people. This is how Gerard describes the three tenets of their half-pagan, half-Christian religion:

1. The Gypsy fears God without loving him

2. The Gypsy believes in the devil but thinks him silly and weak

3. The Gypsy scoffs at the idea of immortality: “We’re already wretched enough in this life. Why begin it anew?”

I read Gerard’s book and I really found myself experiencing a fresh change of perspective. I found the experience so enjoyable that I started going back, century by century, and reading a book for each century. If you’re looking for a change in perspective, or a moment of insight, that’s my best recommendation to you as well.

Also, here’s a notice you may or may not need. Tonight was the last night to join my Insights & More Book Club, at least for a while. At the stroke of midnight tonight, as wolves howled, and owls hooted, and an icy black shape moved in the shadows under the pine trees, I closed the doors to the Insights & More Book Club, to keep everyone inside safe, and to lock any werewolves, ghouls, and vampires out.

I will reopen the Insights & More Book Club in two month’s time. But in order to have the chance to get in, you have to be signed up to my email newsletter. If that’s something you aren’t willing to do, no problem. Otherwise, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Reader wants to join my Insights & More Book Club, but doesn’t want to read

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This morning, I woke up to find a hot inquiry from a potential buyer:

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Hey john!

I wanna ask you a question about this insights book club thing you’re selling.

I’m interested in it but since I basically have a 10+ “must read” book list that’s pending at all times, realistically, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to read the “insight book” along with you.

Do you think this “mastermind” is still worth a buy?

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How to respond? My natural instinct would be to smile, unpack my sample set of stainless steel pots and pans, and start my pitch, explaining how these pots and pans pay for themselves in just two months’ time, thanks to the energy savings and reduction in food wastage. “As an added bonus, they maximize taste thanks to the Silichromatic Ring™ and Redi-Temp® Valve!”

But I stopped myself from doing what comes naturally. Instead, I responded like this:

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Fair question. I’d like to answer it but how can I? What would a mastermind call be worth to you? What would you want to get out of it in order for it to be worth $15/month to you?

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The only reason I thought and responded like this is because I am now going through Jim Camp’s book Start With No, for maybe the fourth time in five years.

I’m going through Camp’s book for the fourth time because, as I’ve written before, I believe books are the most condensed and most useful sources of ideas and information. They give you the kind of depth you will not find in any other format. They stimulate thinking in a way that no other format can match. What’s more, they offer the best value for your money. You should hate books if you’re selling info, and love them if you’re buying info.

Of course, you have to put in some work to get that value out of a book. Reading it, taking notes, thinking a bit, maybe even rereading, once, twice, or four times, like I’m doing with Camp.

​​Which brings me back to my Insights & More Book Club, and to that inquiry I got this morning.

I’ve opened the doors to the Insights & More Book Club to new members for a few days. I will close the doors again tomorrow. We are starting a new book right now for March and April, and it doesn’t make sense to have people join mid-way.

After my Camp-inspired response above, the potential new member of my book club thought for a bit. He decided it makes sense for him to join even if he has no time to read the actual books. I doubt that’s something I could have sold him on with my pots-and-pans sales shtick. And it’s not something I will try to sell you on either.

But if you are interested in the Insights & More Book Club, whether for the books themselves, for company to help you unlock value out of those books, or for other reasons of your own, you will have to sign up to my email newsletter as a first step. You can do that here. You have until tomorrow, February 27.

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/

One roadway to success as a copywriter and marketer

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This morning I found out that Active Campaign has this spreadsheet view of campaign results.

It allows you to sort and compare previous campaigns rather than just looking at the results for each campaign individually.

So I looked at the past three months of my emails. I was curious to see my most unsubscribed-from email over that time.

It turns out I sent this toxic email only last week. The subject line read, “The secret spider web of money and love opportunities.” It had more unsubscribers — both in actual number and as a percentage of the people who got the email — than the other 90+ emails I sent over that period.

Why was this email so reviled?

Maybe the subject line was too good, and it sucked in people who wouldn’t normally open.

Maybe the content was truly awful.

Maybe my unsubscribed readers didn’t like my tone. Maybe they felt I didn’t deliver on promise of love opportunities (all the unsubscribers were women, judging by names). Or maybe they just realized my list is not for them (several came from a classified ad I ran a few days prior).

So what’s my point?

I’m not sure. I don’t really have a smart conclusion to draw from this experiment.

Instead, let me share an interesting idea with you that I read in Jack Trout’s and Al Ries’s book Positioning:

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For many people or products today, one roadway to success is to look at what your competitors are doing and then subtract the poetry or creativity which has become a barrier to getting the message into the mind. With a purified and simplified message, you can then penetrate the prospect’s mind.

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Maybe I should take Ries & Trout’s advice. Let me try it right now:

If you want one roadway to success as a copywriter and marketer, then you can find that inside my Copy Riddles program.

Copy Riddles is based on an exercise devised by legendary copywriter Gary Halbert. Top marketers and copywriters, including Ben Settle and Parris Lampropoulos, have praised this exercise and said it’s how they got good at the craft and how they started writing winning ads and making lots of money.

If you’d like to find out what this exercise is, or even start practicing it yourself, click on the link below and start reading the page that opens up:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/