Personal Change

“Thank God I’ve missed my big chance”

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A couple weeks ago, I made the mistake of looking up a clip from The Godfather on YouTube.

Since then, YouTube has been serving me up a steady diet of Al Pacino interviews, which I of course have allowed myself to be “force-fed.” At least I found out the following curious anecdote:

During the shooting of a scene in the Godfather, Pacino was supposed to jump into a moving car. But he missed the car and almost broke his ankle.

Pacino said later he was shocked by the feeling of relief that passed over him.

“Thank you God,” he said as he lay on the ground. “You’re gonna get me out of this film.”

Pacino had felt like an underling on set, unwanted and unfit for the role of Michael Corleone.

“This injury could be my release from that prison,” Pacino said later.

Of course, that’s not how it ended up. The director, Francis Ford Coppola, liked Pacino too well. That, plus a bunch of corticosteroid injections, meant Pacino stayed in the movie.

In that way, the career of Al Pacino – from young theater actor, talented, unknown, but hopeful, to massive Hollywood star and international celeb, jaded, paranoid, and alcoholic — mirrored the progression of Michael Corleone in the Godfather — from the modest, good, patriotic son with plans of a respectable career, to ruthless head of the Corleone mob family, addicted to control and power, even at the cost of everything in his family and inside himself.

Before I get you too depressed, I wanna make it clear:

This email is not about the vanity of pursuing any kind of achievement or success in life.

Over the next few days, I’m promoting Tom Grundy’s Subtraction Method training.

Tom’s story is that he quit his high-powered London banking job in order to seek enlightenment. Enlightenment found, Tom ended up going back to the bank.

Curious, right?

The first time around at the bank was miserable, says Tom. The second time around has been enjoyable, stress-free, and even fulfilling.

What made the difference is what Tom calls the Subtraction Method.

The Subtraction Method is not about the kind of minimalism that involves living in a hut in the backwoods of Montana, shooting and skinning rabbits and melting snow for drinking water.

Rather, it’s about a different kind of minimalism, one that has to do with ideas and attitudes.

The end result can be that you achieve all the external success you think you want now, and you do it on such terms that you’re not eaten out from inside like Michael Corleone or Al Pacino.

Or the end result can be you don’t achieve the external success you think you want now, and you find out that that’s perfectly fine, because what you thought you wanted is not what you actually want.

Here is where I start waving my hands and waffling and mumbling a little too much. Because the Subtraction Method is not my area of expertise. Rather it’s Tom’s area of expertise.

That’s why I’d like to invite you to sign up to his training. The training is free. It’s happening next Wednesday, Nov 6, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. I’ll be there. If you’d like to be there as well, you can register to get in at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

Announcing: Subtraction Method

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There’s a link at the bottom of this email and honestly I’d like you to go click it and sign up for the free training that’s waiting for you on the other side.

But first a bit o’ background:

This free training is being put on by Tom Grundy, who at one point was in my Write & Profit coaching program.

I’ve mentioned Tom a few times before in these emails because he writes interesting and engaging emails himself, which I read pretty much daily.

Tom also happens to be a London banker with an unusual career trajectory:

He quit his high-powered London banking job because stress and misery… he went in search of fulfillment… he found fulfillment… and then he went back to his high-powered London banking job, because he actually kinda likes the work and the people and the environment now.

Tom’s free training is about what’s allowed him to find sense and satisfaction along with success. This is what he calls the Subtraction Method.

Earlier this year, Tom approached me about promoting a workshop about “mindset.”

I tentatively agreed because 1) I like Tom and I know he knows stuff about self-development and psychology, and 2) I know Tom had already delivered a weeks-long series of workshops on mindset at his company Lloyds Bank. These workshops went so well he’s been rerunning them at Lloyds and even getting asked to do them at other banks too.

Still, I agreed only tentatively, because to be honest I’m a little repulsed by the entire idea of “mindset.”

In particular, I imagined Tom’s workshops were about wholesome 1920s topics like the power of positive thinking… and how to set goals… and clutching to the idea of your children’s college fund as you try to reframe the humiliation of, say, dancing on TikTok to build up your 7-figure personal brand.

But!

It turns out Tom teaches none of those things in his workshops. In fact, he teaches pretty much the opposite, which again he calls the Subtraction Method.

Tom explained his Subtraction Method to me last month. I found that I can get behind his approach 100%.

Tom’s Subtraction Method matches the vague conclusions I’ve been able to reach in my own lifelong search for some sort of understanding and management of my own feelings and internal drives. It’s just that Tom has much more specific and concrete ideas about this, where I’ve only caught some occasional glimpses.

So there you go:

Tom’s free training for you on the Subtraction Method, with my 100% endorsement and in fact personal interest (I will be there on the training too).

As for the details:

1. This training is happening live over Zoom on Wednesday November 6 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST.

2. Tom will be offering a paid series of group workshops on the back of this one-off free training. These workshops I imagine will follow the ones he’s been putting on at his bank.

That said, this one-off live training is not just a tease or a sales pitch for those workshops, because Tom will reveal fully the concepts behind the Subtraction Method.

In other words, if you wanna work through those concepts with a group of people, with Tom at the helm, you will have that option following this one-off training.

If on the other hand, you just want to learn about the Subtraction Method just for curiosity’s sake, or so you can try it out in your own life, in your own good time, by yourself, then this training will give you all the info you need.

3. You might have doubts about what a London banker can teach you about fulfillment and achievement and happiness. After all, odds are you yourself are not a London banker. You might live in a very different kind of world and do a very different kind of work.

My best response is to suggest you go sign up for Tom’s training, and then read a few days’ worth of Tom’s emails, which will start landing in your inbox.

If Tom’s emails really say nothing to you, then skip the training and unsubscribe.

If on the other hand, you find yourself both amused and intrigued by what Tom has to say, the way that I do when I read Tom’s stuff, then you won’t have nothin’ more to do, except show up on Zoom on Wednesday Nov 6, and hear Tom explain the Subtraction Method.

If you’d like to sign up now:

​https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

My new 30-day startup

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Last week, my friend Sam — we studied computer nerdery together in college — forwarded me an interview with a note that said, “Pretty inspiring.”

I listened — 3 and 1/2 hours.

The guy being interviewed was a certain Pieter Levels. Levels is a software developer who creates websites and tech tools and puts them out into the world. Some take off, others don’t. At one point, Levels launched 12 startups in 12 months.

I realized while listening that I had actually come across some of these websites before. There’s Hoodmaps, which shows you a map of your city with crowdsourced tags for each neighborhood, down to the street level. There’s Photo AI, which I guess was one of the first services to allow you to put in your broke selfies and get out rich-looking professional headshots.

Levels has this philosophy of “build cool shit.” As far as the money goes:

Hoodmaps, virally popular though it is, makes no money.

On the other hand, Remote OK, another of Levels’s websites, was making $140k/month back in 2020 (it’s now scaled back to just $10k/month).

But since Levels keeps spinning up new projects, and since most of them run independent of him after the initial sprint of work, the income starts to stack very nicely.

I’m telling you this because there’s a general insecurity that plagues my mind and maybe yours, and that is, “Will it fly? Is this the right project to embark on? Will I end up wasting my time and only get frustration and disappointment as a reward?”

One option for dealing with this insecurity is to wait for a lightning bolt from heaven to strike you and leave you with the certainty of a life mission, one that you will pursue at all cost.

Another option could be something like Levels is doing. To commit to a process. Say, a new “startup” every month, one that you make so tight and well-defined and bare-bones that it can be launched in 30 days or fewer.

At the end of your month, if you reel in your line and find nothing there, then next month, you put a new piece of bait on your hook and cast it out into the world again.

On the other hand, maybe you catch a live and possibly magical goldfish. You then gotta figure out what to do with it — throw it back, club it to death and eat it, or maybe put it inside your aquarium at home and nurture it and watch it grow.

I’ve decided to do this myself.

I will tell you my first “startup.” It’s based on something I learned from Ben Settle, in an appendix to his Email Players Skhema. That’s where Ben gives a sample 30-day email schedule, with a different prompt — “personal story,” “challenge assumptions” — for each day.

I took that idea and I’ve been using it on and off for years. At the start of the month, I spend an hour or so to plan out what kind of email to send each day, over the coming 30 days.

Even when I’m “on” with this daily prompt habit, I don’t always stick to the prompt I’ve set out for myself. Some days I have a specific thing in mind for my daily email, or something specific to promote, and that is good enough.

But in general, I’ve noticed that when I’m “off” this daily prompt habit, when I entirely improvise each day’s email, day after day, my emails take longer to write… end up trying to do too much… and are simply less effective.

On the other hand, when I follow a prompt I’ve set for myself ahead of time, it forces me to actually be more creative. Plus I get my emails done faster, and the result (based on both feedback and sales I’ve had) seems to be better than emails that are improvised from the ground up.

I can tell you this email you’re reading now was based on a prompt I set out for myself ahead of time. As they say in the software development world, I am eating my own dog food.

Over the next 30 days, I will be creating a subscription that gives you a new daily email prompt each day. The ultimate goal here is to shave shave off writing time if you’re already sending emails regularly, and to make it more likely that you send consistently if you don’t do so yet, so you keep building up the relationship with the people on your list, and so you have a real shot at making sales.

I will be offering first access to this to a small number of people on my list, based on who I think will be most likely to get value from it.

But I will make you a deal right now:

If you feel daily email prompts are something that could be useful to you, then hit reply and tell me what you like about this idea. In turn, I will add you to the priority list, so you have a chance to test this service out sooner rather than later.

The making of a legend

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Today being October 26, 2024, it is the 143rd anniversary of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the most famous gunfight from the mythical Wild West.

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened in Tombstone, Arizona, and involved the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday on one side, and a group of cattle rustlers known as the Cowboys on the other.

There’s a ton of legend surrounding this one-minute slice of history, the buildup to it, and the events that followed.

Movies have been made, books have been written. The Wikipedia page about the fight at the O.K. Corral runs to 21,542 words. I spent 3+ hours of my life a couple months ago, napping through Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp at a local movie theater that plays old films.

Today, I had a different idea.

I went on newspapers.com, and I searched.

There was nothing on the day of the fight, but several newspapers reported the event a day later (“A sanguinary shooting affray occurred on Fremont street”).

I also found dozens of articles in the coming weeks and months, reporting how Virgil Earp had called in the military to defend the town of Tombstone against the violence… how Morgan Earp had been shot and killed while playing billiards… how the editor of the Arizona Morning Star wrote that the time is past for courts of justice, and that “hemp is the best code” to deal with the Cowboys.

I gotta tell ya:

I felt a real rush reading these old articles, like I could be there, see history in the making. It felt somehow real — without the layers of interpretation and retelling that soon followed.

Because by next summer, the legend was already forming. Virgil Earp was giving interviews in train cars to news reporters. His description of Doc Holliday will sound familiar to anybody who’s seen one of a dozen movies featuring the man:

“There was something very peculiar about Doc. He was gentlemanly, a good dentist, a friendly man, and yet, outside of us boys, I don’t think he had a friend in the Territory. Tales were told that he had murdered men in different parts of the country, that he had robbed and stolen and committed all manner of crimes, and yet, when persons were asked how they knew it, they could only admit that it was hearsay, and nothing of the kind had in reality been traced up to Doc’s account.”

I bet you’re wondering where all this is going. Let me get to it.

My point for you is simply to go to sources that others don’t go to.

Everybody is talking these days, and most of it is rehashed — the same newsletters, the same “gotta read ’em” books, the same Twitter memes.

Maybe you were truly blessed to have a unique perspective among the 8 billion people on this planet, and maybe, even by looking at the same stuff as everyone else, you have something new to say about it all. “No one I think is in my tree,” John Lennon said once, “I mean it must be high or low.”

But if you’re not John Lennon, there’s a cheat code:

Different inputs, different outputs.

This is not just about creating content, but about business strategies, and about success in life in general. Go where other people don’t go, and you’ll see things that other people don’t see.

So much for inspiration.

But what to promote?

I actually meant to promote newspapers.com as an affiliate because I love the service so well.

I will do so in future and offer a bonus if you give ’em a free try through my link.

But I don’t have any of that set up today.

So let me go back to the world of marketing, and tie into today’s theme of sources nobody else goes to.

If you want to see how A-list copywriters turn boring and dry texts into sexy sales copy that gets strangers to send money… and better yet, if you want to go through this same process yourself, and get a real rush of genuine experience and insight by doing, instead of just hearing other people’s interpretation and retelling, then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

937 days’ worth of email ideas, free

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A couple days ago, after I complained that there’s still a reader on my list, Vivian, who hasn’t bought my Most Valuable Email program, another reader on my list, Bridget, who also hasn’t bought my Most Valuable Email program, wrote in to point out where I’m falling short:

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Key point – where you are falling short is you are not answering the questions:

* Where am I going to get interesting ideas every day?

* How am I going to make the ideas I do have interesting enough to send without making 99% of my current subscribers want to unsubscribe?

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Bridget is absolutely right. I don’t make the “where to get interesting ideas” part clear on the MVE sales page.

It actually is there in the course — I have a little section where I list four sources where I regularly find interesting ideas for Most Valuable Emails.

The reason I don’t make a bigger deal out of it is that I feel interesting ideas are cheap. They are everywhere, and it’s more a matter of how freshly and insightfully they are presented. And that’s what MVE is about.

I wrote back to Bridget to tell her that. And she replied:

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You may believe interesting ideas are cheap. They may well be. But Vivian’s afraid she’ll run out, and that’s more important to her buying decision than objective reality.

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Again, Bridget is absolutely right. So now what?

Let it never be said that I am more stubborn than Andrew Jackson.

And that’s why, I’d now like to announce I am adding one more bonus to my Shangri La MVE event. I’m calling this bonus the Shangri La Library Of Rare and Priceless Ideas.

For years now, I’ve been collecting interesting ideas I come across, whether in books, newsletters, podcasts, or courses.

For each such idea, I write it down, along with the source of where I got it. Sometimes I also add in my own observations as well.

I checked just now and so far I have 937 such interesting ideas. Here’s a sample:

* “To build fascination and rapport, keep asking deeper, more enthusiastic questions” (from James Altucher via his podcast)

* “Use the same link text as the subject line to get clicks” (something Ian Stanley said somewhere)

* “Toil shared becomes no toil at all” (from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives)

* “Trialibility is the no. 1 factor affecting adoption of an innovation” (from Jonah Berger’s Catalyst)

* “Pick out a fun and relevant theme for email promotion events” (from Travis Sago, on some ancient podcast appearance)

Rare? Priceless? You decide. In any case, it’s my contention you still have to do something to these ideas to turn them into fresh and insightful emails. MVE shows you what to do, and it even gets you doing it.

But so you can say you will never ever run out of ideas for Most Valuable Emails, I’m making available my entire Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas as part of this Shangri La event.

I collected all these rare and priceless ideas and put them into a type of endless scroll known as a PDF file.

If you have the stamina, you can read through them from beginning to end. If you don’t, you can pick off an idea each day, apply the Most Valuable Trick, and turn that idea into a fresh and insightful email that 1) pulls in readers, 2) builds your authority, 3) makes you just a tiny bit better as a writer and a marketer, 4) maybe even makes a sale or 10.

My Shangri La MVE event ends tonight at 12 midnight PST. If you need a reminder of what it’s about:

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I’m calling this offer the “Shangri La” MVE offer. And that’s because like Shangri La, the two three parts of this offer only appear once every fifty years. Specifically:

1. I normally don’t offer a payment plan for Most Valuable Email. I did offer a payment plan for MVE once, as a joke, for one day only. Well, like Shangri La, the payment plan is back, and not as a joke.

You can get MVE for $99 today and then two more monthly payments of $99. This payment plan is there to make it psychologically easier to get started — in my experience, people take up payment plans not because they cannot afford to pay in full, but simply because it feels like a smaller commitment.

2. I am also offering a bonus, which I’m calling Shangri La Disappearing Secrets.

Over the past years, I have periodically sent out emails where I teased a secret, which I then turned into a disappearing, one-day bonuses for people who took me up on an offer before the deadline.

Inside this Shangri La Disappearing Secrets bonus, I have collected 12 emails that teased 12 secrets — and I have revealed the secrets themselves. These include:

* An email deliverability tip that is so valuable I decided not to share it publicly, but only with buyers of MVE. This tip is something that multiple people have told me I should turn into a standalone course or training — which I most probably will do one day.

* Stage Surprise Success. Step-by-step instructions for creating effective surprise in any kind of performance, whether thieving, magicking, comedy, drama, or simply writing for impact and influence. And no, it’s not just shocking people with something they weren’t expecting. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of that.

* A daring idea to grow your list and build up your authority at the same time. I have not yet had the guts to put it into practice, even though I have lots of reasons to believe it would work great to build my own authority, and get me more high-quality leads than I’m getting now.

* A persuasion strategy used by con men, pick up artists, salesmen, even by legendary copywriters. I ran a little contest in an email to see if anybody could identify this strategy based on a scene from the movie The Sting. Out of 40+ people who tried to identify the strategy, only 2 got it right.

* An incredible free resource, filled with insightful and proven marketing and positioning advice. This resource comes from a man I’ve only written about once in this newsletter, but who has influenced my thinking about marketing and human psychology more deeply than I may let on — maybe more deeply than anybody else over the past few years.

* Magic Box calls-to-action. Use these if you don’t have a product or a service to sell yet, or if you only have a few bum offers, which your list has stopped responding to every day. Result of a “magic box” CTA when used by one of my coaching clients: the first hand-raiser ever for an under-construction $4k offer.

* A new way to apply the Most Valuable email trick, one I wasn’t comfortable doing until recently. Now that I’ve started using it, it’s gotten people paying more attention… leaning in more… even rereading my emails 3x… and reaching out to reopen dropped business conversations.

* Steven Pressfield (the author of the War of Art and the Legend of Bagger Vance) used to write scripts for porn movies. He once shared two porn storytelling rules. I’ll tell you what they are, and how smart marketers, maybe even me on occasion, use one of these rules in their own sales copy and marketing content.

* A list of 14 criteria of truthful stories. I’m not saying to get devious with this — but you could use these criteria to jelly up a made-up story and make it sound absolutely true. More respectably, you can use these criteria to take your true but fluffy story and make it sound 100% gripping and real.

* Why I drafted US patent application 16/573921 to get the U.S. Government to recognize my Most Valuable Email trick as novel, non-obvious, and having concrete, practical applications.

* Two methods for presenting a persuasive argument, as spelled out by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. I illustrate these two methods with a little public debate that Daniel Throssell and I engaged in via our respective email newsletters. Daniel and I each adopted opposing methods, just as described by Kahneman.

* An infotainment secret I stole from Ben Settle. As far as I know, Ben doesn’t teach this secret in his books or newsletters — I found it by tracking Ben’s emails over a 14-day period and spotting Ben using it in 8 of those 14 emails. And no, I’m not talking about teasing, or telling a story, or stirring up conflict. This is something more fundamental, and more broadly useful, even beyond daily emails.

3. The Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas. 937 interesting ideas I’ve collected over the years from books, podcasts, newsletters, courses. Reach into this library to never again run out of ideas for your Most Valuable Emails.

So there you go. My Shangri La MVE offer:

A payment plan for Most Valuable Email that only appears twice in a century… 12 bonus persuasion secrets… and all the email ideas you will ever need.

This offer is good until tonight, Friday Oct 11, at 12 midnight PST.

If you’re at all interested, the time to act is now. That’s because of that simple certainty I wrote about yesterday — there won’t ever be a better time.

I won’t be running big promo events for Most Valuable Email, because it doesn’t fit my policy of treating previous customers with respect.

On the other hand, if you get MVE now, you will also be eligible for any future disappearing bonuses I might offer with it, or any other special offer or real I will make to new buyers also.

If you’d like to take me up on this Shangri La offer, before it disappears:

​​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​​

P.S. And yes, if you have already bought MVE, you also get the Shangri La Disappearing Secrets and the Shangri La Library Of Rare And Priceless Ideas. No need to write me for them. I’ll add them straight inside the MVE course area.

Is Dan Kennedy secretly reading my emails?

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One week ago, last Friday to be exact, I wrote an email about the “quiet eye,” in which I said:

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One problem I’ve seen over and over is that people ask themselves the question, “How can I sell what I have?”

Instead of asking yourself, “How can I sell what I have,” ask yourself, “What do they want to buy?” Keep that question trained in your mind for longer than is natural. Do some research. Don’t jump ahead to what you’d like to happen, which is for people to buy what you are selling.

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Then this past Wednesday, just two days ago, marketing legend Dan Kennedy wrote an email about constructing offers, in which he said:

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Too many business owners focus on their product first. They think, “I’ve got all these thermoses, how do I sell them?” But the truth is, you should never start with the product. You start with the customer. Who’s most likely to buy your thermos? What are their desires, their needs, their pain points?

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Dan Kennedy, the marketing master who has influenced generations of marketers both online and offline… saying the same thing as I said a few days earlier… using much the same rhetoric?

Could it be that Dan, who famously has no cell phone and a “no Internet” policy in his home, secretly gets his assistant in Phoenix to print out and fax him my emails each week… so he can read them in his Disney-memorabilia-filled basement with a few days’ delay, and be inspired and reminded of great marketing and persuasion ideas?

I’ll let you decide.

But I can tell you something like this has happened to me a few times already.

People I learned from and think of as authorities in the field — people like Dan — end up writing the same thing as I do, a short time after I write about it in an email, sometimes using much the same language.

That’s an inevitable consequence of producing an abundance of ideas by writing daily.

All that’s to say, if you don’t yet write, start.

And if you do write occasionally, then start writing more often.

Keep it up, and you will soon be writing words that others, even legends in the field, will be repeating and discussing next week and next month and next year, whether they actively copied you or not.

And of course, along the way, there’s other benefits to writing. Like building a devoted audience. And making sales, too.

And speaking of sales, you might be interested in my Simple Money Emails program.

It will show you how to write daily emails that make sales.

I’ll give away a part of the secret, because it’s not much of a secret at all. Simple Money Emails teaches you to write emails that 1) say something interesting at the start and 2) that transition into an offer.

You probably could have guessed that much.

What you might not guess is the central, most valuable idea inside Simple Money Emails, one which I repeat over and over throughout the program — a kind of litmus test for choosing which “something interesting” to open up the email with and which ones to discard.

This litmus test is actually something I learned from Dan Kennedy, and I credit him for it inside Simple Money Emails.

Because even though Dan doesn’t read or write emails (with the possible exception of my own), he long ago mastered the kind of story- and news- and pop culture-based sales messaging that works well in emails.

If you’d like to master it too, the following guide can help you get there:

​https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Your FREE Copy Riddle

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My Copy Riddles program is based on a simple idea:

1. Take a look at a bit of dry, factual text

2. Write a sexy, intriguing fascination or headline to sell your reader on that text

3. Compare what you wrote to what an A-list copywriter wrote to sell that same bit of boring text, in a sales letter that brought in hundreds of thousands of sales and millions of dollars

Would you like to try this right now? If so, here’s your free Copy Riddle:

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Auto Dealer Rip-Off

Car-purchase padding: A prep fee of $100 or more (whatever the dealership thinks it can get away with). The cost of preparing your car for delivery is already included in the manufacturer’s sticker price.

Source: Consumer Guide To Successful Car Shopping by Peter Sessler, TAB Books, Blue Ridge Summit, PA.

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If you’d like to get better writing sales copy, follow the steps above. I mean, follow steps 1 and 2:

Read the text above carefully… then do your best to write a sexy, intriguing headline or fascination to sell a reader on that text.

And if you want to also follow step 3 — if you want to see how an A-list copywriter spun this dry and boring text into something fascinating that went out to millions of people, and convinced many of them to send in cash or check or credit card info as a result — you can find that inside a guide called “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

Specifically, you can find it on page 26, right under the sub-headline that reads, “Over 2 million copies sold… and no wonder!”

(Hey, I promised you a free Copy Riddle. I said nothing about a free answer to the Copy Riddle.)

The good news is, while “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes” normally sells for $97, it is now available to you for the next few hours, because you happen to be a reader of this newsletter, for only $7.

You can read the full story about this offer on the page I’ve linked to below.

Final word about “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes”:

I’m not an affiliate for this offer. I don’t get paid whether you buy it or not. I can tell you I did buy this offer myself, for my own purposes, several weeks ago, before I ever had any plans on promoting it to you.

If you’d like to grab it also, before the price shoots up 13-fold in just a few short hours:

​https://bejakovic.com/fascinations​

I’m not OK — you’re not OK

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Here’s a story I’ve been told but don’t remember:

When I was little, maybe around 2 or 3, I was in the dining room with my grandfather, who I loved better than life itself.

I started dragging a large chair around the dining room.

My grandfather told me to stop, I guess because the dragging was making noise and because the chair could topple and flatten 3-year-old Bejako.

But I didn’t stop. I kept dragging the chair around.

My grandfather again told me to stop.

I still didn’t.

So my grandfather gave me a light swat on the hand, not enough to hurt me, but enough to get my attention.

It worked. I let go of the chair. I started wailing instead. And in my childish fear and confusion, I turned to the only natural place of comfort, and that was back to my grandfather. I ran to him and hugged him and wailed away. My grandfather said later he felt so guilty that he wished for his hand, the one he had swatted me with, to dry up and fall off.

I’m reading a book now called, I’m OK — You’re OK. I’m reading it because:

I’ve learned the most about email marketing and copywriting from Ben Settle…

Ben frequently recommends a book called Start With No, by negotiation coach Jim Camp, which I’ve read a half dozen times…

Start With No is largely a rehash of ideas in a book called You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar, by sales trainer Dave Sandler, which I read for the first time earlier this year…

Sandler’s book and sales system are a mix of classic sales techniques, his own personal experimentation, and ideas coming from transactional analysis, specifically as described in the book I’m OK — You’re OK, by psychiatrist Thomas Harris.

(There’s value in working backwards like that.)

Here’s a passage in I’m OK — You’re OK that stuck out to me:

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The predominant by-product of the frustrating, civilizing process is negative feelings. On the basis of these feelings the little person early concludes, “I’m not OK.” We call this comprehensive self-estimate the NOT OK, or the NOT OK Child. This permanent recording is the residue of having been a child. Any child. Even the child of kind, loving, well-meaning parents. It is the situation of childhood and not the intention of the parents which produces the problem.

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Like I said, this stuck out to me. Because some people had happy, stable childhoods. But even those people have a reservoir of childhood memories that make them feel not OK today. And maybe those people wonder what the hell is wrong with them. Says Harris, nothing. That’s life.

On the other hand, other people had genuinely troubled or traumatizing childhoods. They might suspect their childhood left them somehow uniquely warped and deformed, and the fact they feel not OK today proves it. But that logic is wrong, says Harris, because again, we are all not OK.

“I’m not OK — You’re not OK” is not a very inspiring message. Fortunately, the above passage is not how the book ends. In fact it only comes in chapter two. After all, the book is titled I’m OK — You’re OK.

If you’d like to know how to get out of the impulsive, frustrating, and maybe painful web of childhood memories and patterns, at least according to Thomas Harris, you can check out I’m OK — You’re OK below, and maybe learn a thing or two about sales and negotiation and copywriting in the process:

​https://bejakovic.com/ok​

The pros and cons of the “mask of misfortune”

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“Hey what’s your name?”

“Helen.”

“That’s nice. You look like a Helen. Helen, we’re both in sales. Let me tell you why I suck as a salesman.”

Maybe you know this scene. It’s from the movie Tommy Boy.

Chris Farley plays his usual character, “manic fat guy,” trying to make sales to save his family business.

In this scene, Chris is in a diner, trying to order chicken wings. But Helen, the waitress, flatly tells him the kitchen is closed.

Instead of pressing the point, Chris goes on to tell Helen why he sucks as a salesman. He uses a bread roll to illustrate his possible sale:

He loves his possible sale so much, like a pretty new pet, that he ends up ripping it apart — because he’s such a manic fat guy.

It’s a funny scene, worth watching if you haven’t seen it, worth revisiting if you have.

At the end of Chris’s manic fat guy routine, Helen the waitress shakes her head.

“God you’re sick,” she says with a chuckle. “Tell you what. I’ll go turn the fryers back on and throw some wings in for ya.”

The typical conclusion to a story like is — “Share your stories of vulnerability and failure, and magic doors open!”

Maybe. But I’d like to tell you a different conclusion.

Because Chris Farley really was sick. He battled alcoholism and drug use and apparently felt horrible about the weight he always joked about. He ended up dead at age 33, from a combination of cocaine and morphine, though traces of marijuana and antidepressants were also found in his system.

I’m not trying to bring you down. I’m trying to give you some practical advice. Specifically, some practical advice I read in a book called The Narrow Road, by a multimillionaire named Felix Dennis. Says Dennis:

“Donning the mask of misfortune for the amusement of those around you or to elicit sympathy is a perilous activity. You run the risk of the mask fitting a little too well. Or — and I have seen this happen — of becoming the mask.”

In entirely unrelated news:

The deadline to get The Secret of the Magi before the price doubles is tonight, Sunday, at 12 midnight PST.

The Secret of the Magi tells you just one thing — the big takeaway I’ve had about opening conversations that can lead to business partnerships. It’s based on my experiences being both on the receiving end of many cold outreach attempts… and spending this past summer cold contacting a bunch of other people.

Your investment to get The Secret of the Magi is a whopping $23.50. Well, assuming you get it before the deadline, which is, again, tonight at 12 midnight PST.

I won’t be writing any more emails before then. So in case you want this guide, maybe get it now?

It’s up to you. Here’s the link if you want to find out the secret:

​https://bejakovic.com/secret-of-the-magi​

The best reason not to buy MyPEEPS

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The deadline to get MyPEEPS is getting uncomfortably near… but not everybody is nervous. For example, one reader wrote me already last week to tell me he won’t be buying — and he had the best reason imaginable:

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This is a great offer, John. And I would’ve joined immediately if I hadn’t already purchased this course two times 🙂

I bought it when Travis Sago was promoting it.. and found out afterward that I had bought it earlier when Ryan Lee promoted it.

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What I’m about to say doesn’t actually apply to the reader who wrote me the above.

He happens to be a successful marketer, and he’s already mastered list building. He bought MyPEEPS — once — because he buys courses looking for a slight edge from people who are masters in various aspects of marketing. He bought it the second time because he’s busy implementing what those courses teach, and it probably slipped his mind he already had the thing.

Unfortunately, many people are not like this.

Many people buy a course, and never implement anything from it, or they implement at the speed of continental drift.

That is in part why I decided to offer the Shotgun Messenger bonus I am offering with MyPEEPS, in case you get it by the deadline tonight. It’s to help you implement… to motivate you to implement… to charm you to implement.

Of course, I’m under no illusion that everybody who buys MyPEEPS and gets in on my bonus will end up going through the course, and actually taking the steps needed to get results.

I would like for that to happen. But I’m realistic. I know that even with my offered help, not everybody will follow through.

But maybe you will join. If you do, I’ll do all I can to help you put this course to good use, so you can build yourself an email list full of people who want to read what you write, and buy what you sell.

Tick tock. The deadline to get MyPEEPS is in a few short hours, at 12 midnight PST.

Are you a little nervous? Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe it means you still have some interest in this offer, and the outcome it promises.

If you’d like to look over the details and make your decision before the clock makes the decision for you:

​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​